§ I. TYNDALE. Chap. ii. With Tyndale the history of our present English 1. TYNDALE. Bible begins1; and for fifteen years the history of the Bible is almost identical with the history of Tyndale. The fortunes of both if followed out in detail are even of romantic interest. Of the early life of Tyndale we know nothing. He was born about 14843, at an obscure village in Gloucestershire, and 'brought up from a 'child,' as Foxe says, in the University of Oxford, where he was 'singularly addicted to the study of the Scrip'tures'.' From Oxford he went to Cambridge, and after spending some time there, as we have noticed, he returned about 1520 to his native county as tutor in the family of Sir John Walsh of Little Sodbury. Here he spent two years, not without many controversies, in one of which he made his memorable declaration 1 See Appendix VIII. 2 It may be remarked that the dates in Tyndale's life up to his coming to London in 1522-3 are fixed only approximately and by conjecture. There is no adequate external evidence to determine them exactly, but the amount of error cannot be great. may refer by anticipation to a promised Life of Tyndale by the Rev. R. Demaus, as certain to exhaust all the information on the subject which is left to us. 3 The exact place is uncertain, but it was near Nibley Knoll, one of the Cotswold hills, on which a monument has lately been erected to his memory. Mr F. Fry informs me that "there are Tyndales now in "those parts;" and further that "Hunt's Court, where Tyndale is "said to have been born, did not come into the possession of the "Tyndale family till later." Tyn dale was known also by the name 4 He studied in Magdalene Hall Mr Fry informs me that the MS. quoted in the Historical Account, p. 41 n., purporting to contain translations by Tyndale ('W. T.') from the New Testament and dated 1502, was unquestionably a forgery. The MS. was afterwards burnt; but the facsimile of a single page, for the sight of which I am indebted to Mr Fry, seems absolutely conclusive as to its spuriousness. Chap. ii. 'His failure with the bishop of London. to 'a learned man' who 'said we were better be without When his enemies grew so powerful as to endanger his patron, 'I gat me,' he says, to 'London.' 'If I might 'come to the bishop of London's service'-Tunstall's, of whose love of scholarship Erasmus had spoken highly— 'thought I, I were happy.' By this time he knew what his work was, and he was resolutely set to accomplish which he dwelt most in the night before his death. Anderson, I. p. 301. It is not indeed unlikely, as has been pointed out by the author of the Historical Account (p. 34), that the saying of Tyndale given above was suggested by a phrase in the Exhortation of Erasmus. 'I would,' he writes, 'that the husbandman at the plough should sing something 'from hence [the Gospels and Epi'stles].' 1 This passage is given according to the first edition (1563), p. 514. In the later editions the form of the last sentence is turned into the oblique: Acts and Monuments, V. 117. 2 One memorable instance of its influence is seen in the narrative of Bilney, afterwards martyred in 1531, who was first roused to a lively faith by reading in Erasmus' edition, I Tim. i. 15, as he narrates in touching words in a letter addressed to Tunstal: Foxe, Acts and Monuments, IV. 635. Bilney's Latin Bible is still 3 Preface to Genesis [Pentateuck], preserved with many passages mark- p. 396 (Park. Soc.). ed, and among them the one on bit1. At the same time he was prepared to furnish the bishop for whose countenance he looked with an adequate test of his competency. The claim which he preferred was supported by a translation of a speech of Isocrates from the Greek. 'But God,' he continues, and the story can only be given fitly in his own words, 'saw 'that I was beguiled, and that that counsel was not the next way to my purpose'-to translate the Scriptures— and therefore He gat me no favour in my lord's sight. 'Whereupon my lord answered me, his house was full: he had more than he could well find; and advised me 'to seek in London, where he said I could not lack a 'service.' Chap. ii. by H. Mun The bishop's prediction was fulfilled in a way which he could not have anticipated. Tyndale had indeed already found a friend ready to help him in an alderman of London, Humphrey Munmouth. Munmouth, who was Entertained afterwards (1528) thrown into the Tower for the favour mouth. which he had shewn Tyndale and other reformers, has left an interesting account of his acquaintance with him in a petition which he addressed to Wolsey to obtain his release. 'I heard [Tyndale]' he writes 'preach two or 'three sermons at St Dunstan's-in-the-West in London2, 1 No phrase could more completely misrepresent Tyndale's character than that by which Mr Froude has thought right to describe him at this time the young dreamer' (II. 30). Tyndale could not have been much less than forty years old at the time, and he was less of a 'dreamer' even than Luther. From the first he had exactly measured the cost of his work; and when he had once made his resolve to translate the Scriptures, he never afterwards lost sight of it, and never failed in doing what he proposed to do. [I do not think that the phrase 'fiery young enthusiast,' which Mr Chap. ii. His retirement to the Continent. He begins to print his New Testa ment. 1525. 'and after that I chanced to meet with him, and with This time of waiting was not lost upon Tyndale. In 2) So he left his native country for ever, to suffer, as he elsewhere says, 'poverty, exile, bitter absence from 'friends, hunger and thirst and cold, great dangers and ' innumerable other hard and sharp fightings,' but yet to achieve his work and after death to force even Tunstall to set his name upon it. Tyndale's first place of refuge was Hamburgh. This 1 Foxe, IV. 617, App. to Strype, Eccles. Mem. No. 89. 2 Preface, 1. c. Report of Vaughan to Henry VIII., quoted by Anderson, I. 272. free city, like Antwerp, offered great advantages to religious exiles; and at a later period we find Coverdale also living there for some months1. At the same time, as no press was yet established at Hamburgh, Tyndale may not have removed there during the whole of the year 1524, if, as appears likely, he published the Gospels of St Matthew and St Mark separately at that date2. Among other places, Wittenberg, where Luther was then living, was easily accessible, and it is not unlikely that Tyndale found some opportunity of seeing the great leader with whom the work of the Reformation was identified. The fact of a passing visit would explain satisfactorily the statement of Sir T. More3, while the more exact account of Spalatinus*, who makes no mention of Luther, leads to the belief, on all grounds the most probable, that Tyndale, though acquainted with Luther's writings and ready to make use of them3, lived independently, with his fellow exiles, at Hamburgh or elsewhere, till his chosen work was completed. 1 See below, note 6. 2 The separate publication of these Gospels appears probable from the evidence adduced by Anderson, I. 153, 183, but the references may be to the (Cologne) quarto edition. See P. 32, n. I. 3 Dialogue, 3, 8. 'It is to be con'sidered that at the time of this translation, Hitchins [Tyndale] was 'with Luther at Wittenberg, and set 'certain glosses in the margin framed 'for the setting forth of the ungracious text. By St John, quoth your 'friend, if that be true that Hitchins 'was at that time with Luther, it is a 'plain token that he wrought some'what after his counsel...... Very 'true, quoth I. But as touching the 'confederacy between Luther and him [it] is a thing well known and 'plainly confirmed by such as have 'been taken and convicted here of 'heresy coming from thence.......' To this Tyndale's reply is simply: 4 See below, p. 34, n. 6 Tyndale's close connexion with Chap. ii. |