While in Warwickshire, Becon received the unexpected news of the death of his step-father: he felt it therefore his duty, and the friends around him fully approved his determination, to return to his native country, in order to comfort his mother, now for the second time a widow.

In addition to the tutorial employment already noticed, he had not been idle with his pen during his stay in the midland counties. Several treatises he had composed, of which the “Governance of Virtue” was one; written, as he says in the preface to it, “in the bloody, boisterous, burning time, when the reading of the holy bible, the word of our souls’ health, was forbidden the poor lay people” – a fact which will explain why he made it in great part a mass of scripture quotations. He had also translated a few works from Latin into English. Some of these productions he had ventured from his retirement to put forth in print, though still under an assumed
name: the rest he reserved till a more favourable opportunity should present itself. He incurred, indeed, no slight risk in publishing at all at this time; for his works were included in a proclamation dated July 8, 1546, (which may be seen in Fox^[1],) against so-called heretical books.

The accession of king Edward VI. opened to Becon both personal security and a wider field of usefulness. He was instituted, March 24, 1547, to the rectory of St Stephen Walbrook, on the presentation of tbe Grocer’s Company^[2]: he was also made by archbishop Cranmer (to whom he was chaplain) one of the six preachers in Canterbury Cathedral^[3]. The origin of his acquaintancewith this eminent prelate does not appear. But there is reasonable ground for believing, that it was at a period much prior to the time at which we are now arrived, For in his “Book of Matrimony,” while relating a conversation he remembered which took place at the  archbishop’s table upon the lawfulness of priests’ marriages, he calls him “that glorious martyr of Christ, but now a most glorious saint in heaven, sometime my lord and master and most beneficial patron, and maintainer of my studies, not only of my studious travails, but also of many other.” These words, coupled with the fact of Becon’s earlier residence in Kent, may with some kind of probability be taken to indicate, that he had Cranmer’s countenance at a time, rather when he was preparing for future labours, than when, almost arrived at middle life, he was actually engaged in those labours. The discussion referred to may be supposed to have occurred early in king Edward’s reign, when the subject came formally before the convocation. Becon dedicated his “Treatise of Fasting,” which is printed in the second part of his collected works, to archbishop Cranmer. In the preface he speaks gratefully of the kindnesses he received. He does not enumerate them, but he describes them as
“the manifold benefits which ye have bounteously bestowed upon me.” Strype, it may be added, calls him a man “well-known to the archbishop^[4],”

Becon was also now chaplain to the protector duke of Somerset, and seems to have been for some time an inmate in his family at Sheen. During the duke’s imprisonment in 1549, daily prayers were offered for him by his household; and when at length, Feb. 6, 1550, he was set at liberty, there was a form of thanksgiving for his graces deliverance used, which was “gathered,” we are told, “and set forth by Thomas Becon, minister there^[5].”

[1] Fox, Acts and Monuments, Vol. II. p. 496.
[2] Newcourt. Repertor. Eccles. Paroch. Londinens. Lond. 1708-10. Vol 1. p. 540.
[3] The other five are stated to have/been Nicholas Ridley, afterwards bishop of London and martyr, Lancelot Ridley, Richard Turner, Richard Beaseley, and John Joseph.
[4] Strype’s Life of Cranmer. Lond. 1694. Book III. chap. xv. p. 357.
[5] Bp. Kennett’s Collections, Vol. XLVI. No. 12.