The Oxford Town and Gown 10K run starts from the University Parks at 10am this Sunday and will no doubt make access to St Mary’s difficult, particularly from the North side, which is a pity because we have The Revd Professor Jane Shaw preaching the University Sermon at 10.30am. Jane was a curate here about 16 or 17 years ago before being Chaplain of New College, Dean of grace Cathedral, San Francisco, and now Professor of Religious Life at Stanford.

What’s in the mind of a martyr? When we think of historical figures it’s easy to forget the experiences that made up their memory bank. What are the things people might reflect on in extremis? Thomas Cranmer had two wives: the first he married in Cambridge before he was ordained, but she died in childbirth, and in 1532, already ordained, he married Marguerite the niece of his reforming Nuremberg friend, Andreas Osiander, whilst travelling in central Europe.

This man archbishop died in Broad Street was extensively travelled for a man of his time. As a diplomat in the court of Henry VIII engaged in trying to secure the King’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, he sailed from Plymouth across the Bay of Biscay to Spain. The thirteen day voyage home, in rough seas, was spent assisting to bale out the ship. On a second embassy he travelled overland form Calais to Italy to meet the Pope in Bologna, where he was appointed Penitentiary General of England. And in 1532 he was sent to negotiate the King’s Great Matter with Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. This mission took him down the Rhine to Worms and Speyer, Nuremberg, Regensburg, and Vienna itself. Thus the man finally imprisoned in Oxford had a wealth of memories far more extensive than most of his contemporaries.