was a scholar of eminence. When Pole, in a letter to the king, wished him to allow Tunstall to read his book De Unitate, he calls the bishop "a sad and learned man"; and More, in the Utopia, styles him "a man doubtless out of comparison," and in his Epitaph he describes him as so "excelling in learning, wit, and virtue, that the whole world scant hath at this day any more learned, wiser, or better." Tunstall was a pupil of Grocyn, but he could have had no great leisure for study after he entered public life, for, with rapid promotion in the church, he filled a succession of public or civil offices-Vicar-General to Warham in 1508, Master of the Rolls in 1516, Keeper of the Privy Seal in 1523, besides being Ambassador to the Archduke Charles, to Charles V in 1516, at Worms in 1519, to Francis I in 1527-29, and, with More, at Cambray in 1529. He became Bishop of London in 1522, was translated to Durham in 1530, was finally deprived in 1559, and committed, at the age of eighty-four, to the custody of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He had permitted no persecution in his diocese of Durham, and, according to Strype, he was before his death, by the Archbishop's kindness and conversation, "brought off from papistical errors." He had been godfather to Elizabeth when he baptized her at Greenwich in 1533; and on the coronation of Mary he stood at the queen's right hand.

Some years afterwards, or in 1546, there was published "The Supplication of the Poor Commons to the King," and the story there stated is not beyond the bounds of belief. "We heard say that they proffered your Highness, that if you would please to call in the Bible again, forasmuch as it was not faithfully translated in all parts, they would oversee it, and within seven years set it forth again. Your bishops, most victorious Prince, if they might have gotten in the Bible for seven years, would have trusted that, by that time, either your Highness should have been dead, or the Bible forgotten: or they themselves out of your Highness' reach; so that you should not have like power over them as you have now. When your Majesty appointed two of them (Tunstall and Heath) to overlook the translation of the Bible, they said they had done your Highness' commandment therein: yea, they set their names there

XXVIII.]

ANTHONY MARLER.

397

unto: but when they saw the world somewhat like to wring on the other side, they denied it, and said they never meddled therewith, causing the printer to take out their names, which were erst set before the Bible, to certify to all men that they had diligently perused it, according as your Highness had commanded." 1

Grafton had risked five hundred pounds in the first edition of 1539, and in the six subsequent editions no small amount of capital must have been embarked-probably towards fifty thousand pounds sterling of present value. The expense of these last editions was defrayed, wholly or partially, by Anthony Marler, a haberdasher in London, who also presented to his Majesty a magnificent copy on vellum, with an inscription. This Bible is still preserved in the British Museum. The minutes of the Privy Council are significant. "Greenwich, 25th April; it was agreed that Anthony Marler of London, merchant, might sell the Bibles of the Great Bible unbound for x8. sterling, and bound, being trimmed with bullyons, for XIIS. sterling"-the first being equal to about £7, and the second to £9 of present value. But copies were lying on his hands, and he might be "undone for ever," as he complains. The best way, therefore, to reimburse the petitioner was to help the volumes off his hands; and a proclamation was issued on the 7th of May, 1540, which ordered all churches to provide themselves with a Bible of the largest volume, and another on the 6th of May, 1541, went fully into the subject:2

.

The which godly commandment and injunction was to the only intent that every of the King's Majesty's loving subjects, minding to read therein, might, by occasion thereof, not only consider and perceive the great and ineffable omnipotent power, promise, justice, mercy, and goodness of Almighty God; but also to learn thereby to observe God's commandments, and to obey their Sovereign Lord, and high powers, and to exercise godly charity, and to use themselves according to their vocations, in a pure and sincere Christian life, without murmur or grudging: By the which injunctions, 2 Burnet, vol. I, pt. ii, p. 377.

1 Strype, vol. I, pt. i, p. 612,

the King's Royal Majesty intended that his loving subjects should have and use the commodities of the reading of the said Bibles, for the purpose above rehearsed, humbly, meekly, reverently, and obediently, and not that any of them should read the said Bibles with high and loud voices, in time of the celebration of the holy mass, and other divine services used in the Church; or that any his lay subjects reading the same, should presume to take upon them any common disputation, argument, or exposition of the mysteries therein contained; but that every such layman should, humbly, meekly, and reverently read the same for his own instruction, edification, and amendment of his life, according to God's holy word therein mentioned. And notwithstanding the King's said most godly and gracious commandment and injunction, in form as is aforesaid, his Royal Majesty is informed that divers and many towns and parishes within this his realm, have neglected their duties in the accomplishment thereof, whereof his Highness marvelleth not a little; and minding the execution of his said former most godly and gracious injunctions, doth straitly charge and command that the curats and parishioners of every town and parish within this his realm of England, not having already Bibles provided within their parish churches, shall, on this side the Feast of All-Saints next coming, buy and provide Bibles of the largest and greatest volume, and cause the same to be set and fixed in every one of the said parish churches, there to be used as is aforesaid, according to the said former injunctions, upon pain that the curat and inhabitants of the parishes and towns, shall lose and forfeit to the King's Majesty, for every month that they shall lack and want the said Bibles, after the same feast of AllSaints, 40s., the one half of the same forfeit to be to the King's Majesty, and the other half to him or them which shall first find and present the same to the King's Majesties Council. And finally, the King's Royal Majesty doth declare and signify to all and singular his loving subjects, that to the intent they may have the said Bibles of the greatest volume, at equal and reasonable prices, his Highness, by the advice of his Council, hath ordained and taxed that the sellers thereof shall not

XXVIII.]

ROYAL WARRANT FOR PRICE OF BIBLES.

399

take for any of the said Bibles unbound, above the price of ten shillings; and for every of the said Bibles well and sufficiently bound, trimmed and clasped, not above twelve shillings, upon pain the seller to lose, for every Bible sold contrary to his Highness's proclamation, four shillings; the one moiety thereof to the King's Majesty, and the other moiety to the finder and presenter of the defaulter, as is aforesaid..

The price was fixed at the terms suggested by Marler. The measure was a strange one, and the language of the proclamation sounds very oddly when the subject is the Word of God. The fixing down of the price of copies, the stepping in of the law between buyer and seller, and the employment of informers, were in accordance with the false notions of political economy current at that epoch. If a man were fined for not having bought a Bible, he was not likely to regard the volume with special affection. Another plan to secure a wide circulation was apparently not thought of—namely, to print the book in smaller and cheaper form.

The title-page of the last volume of this series of the Great Bible, December, 1541, by its distinct declaration of being the authorized Bible, as in the edition of April, 1540, and by its translation of the Latin motto, seems to glance back at the two editions" overseen" by Tunstall and Heath-,

The Byble in Englishe, that is to saye, the content of all the holy scrypture both of the olde and newe testament, with a prologe thereinto, made by the reverende father in God, Thomas archebisshop of Cantorbury. This is the Byble appoynted to the use of the Churches. Printed by Rycharde Grafton. Cum priuilegio ad imprimendum solum An. do. MDXL." The colophon is "The ende of the Newe Testament, and of the whole Bible, Finysshed in December MCCCCCXLI. A domino factum est istud. This is the Lordes Doynge." The pointing hands disappeared after Crumwell's death.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE circulation of the Bible by royal command went on with increased speed, and even Edmund Bonner, in his unaccountable zeal, and as he had promised to Grafton in Paris, commanded his archdeacon by letter, on the 11th of May, 1542, to execute the royal mandate, and issued this Injunction :

"By the authority given to me of God, and by our said Sovereign Lord the King's Majesty, I exhort, require, and command, that every parson, vicar, and curat, shall read over and diligently study every day one chapter of the Bible, and that with the gloss ordinary, or some other doctor or expositor, approved and allowed in this Church of England, proceeding from chapter to chapter, from the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, to the end of the New Testament; and the same so diligently studied to keep still and retain in memory, and tɔ come to the rehearsal and recital thereof, at all such time and times as they, or any of them, shall be commanded thereunto by me, or any of my officers or deputies." 1

Bishop Bonner also set up six Bibles in St. Paul's. Latimer ordered a copy to be chained in the monastery of Worcester, and Hooper directed every church to have a Bible, and the

1 Vol. I, pt. ii, p. 381.

2 Many readers may have seen Sir George Harvey's picture "The Reading of the Bible in old St. Paul's." The person figured as reading to an eager group around him represents John Porter, "a fresh young man, and of a big stature, who could read well, and had an audible voice."

Bonner and his chaplains rebuked him; but he quietly replied to the bishop that he had done nothing "contrary to his advertisements which had been fixed in print over every Bible." He was then sent to Newgate, and tortured so terribly that he soon died in his dungeon. Foxe, vol. V, p. 452.