quality:corruption, linguistic:voice_change
Early years (1489–1527)

Historians know nothing definite about Cranmer's early schooling. He probably attended a grammar school in his village. At 14, two years after his father's death, he was sent to the newly created Jesus College, Cambridge. It took him eight years to attain his Bachelor of Arts degree, following a curriculum of logic, classical literature, and philosophy. During this time, he began to collect medieval scholastic books, which he preserved faithfully throughout his life. For his master's degree he studied the humanists Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and Erasmus. He finished the course in three years. Shortly after receiving his Master of Arts degree in 1515, he was elected to a fellowship of Jesus College.

Sometime after Cranmer took his MA, he married a woman named Joan. Although he was not yet a priest, he was obliged to give up his fellowship, resulting in losing his residence at Jesus College. To support himself and his wife, he took a job as a reader at Buckingham Hall (later reformed as Magdalene College). When Joan died during her first childbirth, Jesus College showed its regard for Cranmer by reinstating his fellowship. He began studying theology, and by 1520, he had been ordained, the university already having named him as one of its preachers. He received his Doctor of Divinity degree in 1526.

Not much is known about Cranmer's thoughts and experiences during his three decades at Cambridge. Traditionally, he has been portrayed as a humanist whose enthusiasm for biblical scholarship prepared him to adopt Lutheran ideas, which were spreading during the 1520s. A study of his marginalia reveals an early antipathy to Martin Luther and an admiration for Erasmus. When Cardinal Wolsey, the king's Lord Chancellor, selected several Cambridge scholars, including Edward Lee, Stephen Gardiner and Richard Sampson, to be diplomats throughout Europe, Cranmer was chosen for an embassy to the Holy Roman Emperor. His supposed participation in an earlier embassy to Spain mentioned in the older literature, has proved to be spurious.