II. HISTORY. time, as he tells us, he 'perceived by experience, CHAP. how that it was impossible to establish the lay EXTERNAL 'people in any truth except the Scripture were 'plainly laid before their eyes in their mother 'tongue, that they might see the process, order 'and meaning of the text'...' This thing,' he says, 'only moved me to translate the New Testament'.' with the London. When his enemies grew so powerful as to en- His failure danger his patron, 'I gat me,' he says, to London.' bishop of 'If I might come to the bishop of London's service -Tunstall, 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 it. At the same roused to a lively faith by reading in Erasmus' edition, 1 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 preserved with many passages marked, and among them the one on 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. 44), that the saying of Tyndale given above was suggested by a phrase in the Exhortation of Erasmus. 'I would,' he writes, that the husbandman 1 Preface to Pentateuch, p. 396 2 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; D II. CHAP. time he was prepared to furnish the bishop for EXTERNAL whose countenance he looked with an adequate test of his competency. The claim which he preferred was supported by a translation of a speech HISTORY. 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 the '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.' 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 Entertain- Munmouth. Munmouth, who was afterwards (1528) ed by H. Mun- thrown into the Tower for the favour which he had mouth. 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 and when he had once made his sight of it, and never failed in doing what he proposed to do. II. EXTERNAL 'preach two or three sermons at St Dunstan's in CHAP. 'the West in London, and after that I chanced to 'meet with him, and with communication I ex'amined what living he had. He said he had none 'at all, but he trusted to be with my lord of Lon'don, in his service, and therefore I had the better 'fantasy to him. Afterward [when this hope failed 'he]...came to me again, and besought me to help 'him; and so I took him into my house half a 'year; and there he lived like a good priest as 'methought. He studied most part of the day 'and of the night at his book; and he would eat 'but sodden meat by his good will, nor drink but 'small single beer. I never saw him wear linen ' about him in the space he was with me. I did promise him ten pounds sterling to pray for my 'father and mother their souls and all Christian 'souls. I did pay it when he made his exchange 'to Hamburgh". This time of waiting was not lost upon Tyndale. In the busy conflicts and intrigues of city life he learnt what had been hidden from him in the retirement of the country. 'In London' he continues 'I abode almost a year, and marked the 'course of the world...and understood at the last 1 Foxe, IV. 617, App. to Strype, Eccles. Mem. No. 89. II. EXTERNAL CHAP. 'not only that there was no room in my lord of 'London's palace to translate the New Testament, 'but also that there was no place to do it in all 'England...". HISTORY, His retire ment to the So he left his native country for ever, to suffer, Continent. 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 He begins to print his New Tes tament. 1525. it. Tyndale's first place of refuge was Hamburgh. He remained there during the year 15243 and published, as it seems, the gospels of St Matthew and St Mark separately with marginal notes. In the next year he went to Cologne and there proceeded to print his first complete New Testament, the translation of which he had accomplished alone. 1 Preface 1. c. 2 Report of Vaughan to Hen- 3 Mr Anderson successfully or Joy, if he was with him at the time, had any share in the translation. The date of the printing of the New Testament | is established by the use of a woodcut as the frontispiece to St Matthew which was afterwards cut down and used in an edition of Rupert of Deutz, finished June 12, 1526. Ander. son, I. p. 63. II. HISTORY. It was a time of sore trial for the Reformers. CHAP. Luther's marriage troubled some. His breach with EXTERNAL Karlstadt alienated others. The rising of the peasants furnished a ready pretext to the lukewarm for confounding the new doctrines with revolutionary license. But Tyndale laboured on in silence, and ten sheets of his Testament were printed in quarto when his work was stopped by the intrigues of Cochlæus, a relentless enemy of the Reformation. first at ment. It is a strange and vivid picture which Coch- Cochlaus' accounts of læus, who is the historian of his own achievement, Tyndale's draws of the progress and discovery of the work. tempt to print his The translation of 'the New Testament of Luther' New Testa-so he calls it was, in his eyes, part of a great scheme for converting all England to Lutheranism. The expense, as he learnt, was defrayed by English merchants; and their design was only betrayed by their excess of confidence. But though Cochlæus was aware of the design, he could not for some time find any clue to the office where it was being executed. At last becoming familiar with the printers of Cologne while engaged on a book to be published there, he heard them in unguarded moments boast of the revolution which would be shortly wrought in England. The clue was not neglected. He invited some of them to his house, |