was all the while wholly ignorant of the strange occupation which had lodged itself in the midst of it. The swift and continuous issue of uniform copies, and the eagerness to sell for sixty crowns what the penmen would have charged four hundred for, led to accusations of magic, and suspicions of confederacy with the powers of evil. The first printers were willing to foster the impression that their pages were still inscribed by hand; but honest Caxton revealed the truth in the preface to his first publication. "It is not written with pen and ink as other books, but emprynted." A second edition of the Bible, by Fust and Schoeffer, appeared in 1462, and there had been two editions of a Psalter in 1457 and in 1459. When one looks at the form of the letters,1 "the strength of the paper, and the lustre of the ink" in these earliest volumes, he is inclined to conclude that printing has for the last four centuries made little improvement, save in quickness and cheapness, and that the art was perfect at its birth, like Athene springing at once in full armour from the brain of Zeus. The sack of Mentz in 1462 scattered the skilled workmen, so that the new power soon leapt out of its secrecy, was welcomed in Italy, and established in Rome by Sweynheym and Pannartz, under Pope Paul II. The press at Rome sent out in a few years more than twelve thousand volumes in twenty-eight editions. The art was carried to Paris in 1469; but not to Scotland till 1507. About 1474, Caxton, who had learned the mystery abroad, set up a press at Westminster, and he had some noted successors, Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, and Rastell. Through Holland, Germany, and France, the recent invention at once proved a power betokening yet mightier results. Another era had dawned, and in the revival of letters, and in the employment of the press, due preparation was made for setting forth the Bible in its own tongues and in translations, and for putting such texts and versions into immediate dispersion over all lands.

1 The common form of letter so familiar to us, is called the Roman character, from a fount of types

employed in the Roman capital, Italic letters being first used in Venice.

CHAPTER VI.

AMONG the youths attracted to Cambridge, probably by

the fame of Erasmus, there was one who had been for some years at Oxford, a busy learner, whose studies and attainments in Greek were soon to be directed through life and death to the noblest of works-William Tyndale. Though William Tyndale has reared for himself an imperishable monument in our English Bible, the place and date of his birth are alike uncertain. On such points he is himself very reticent in his writings, perhaps from the fear of bringing others into suspicion and trouble. It has been for a century and a half the opinion of biographers that he was born at Hunt's Court, North Nibley, in the hundred of Berkeley, Gloucestershire; and in honour of that belief a handsome column has been erected to his memory on Nibley Knoll, a beautiful eminence in the Cotswold Range. But it is now believed that, though the Tyndales of Hunt's Court1 might be relations of the martyr, they were not in possession of that property till after his death. Thomas Tyndale and Alice Hunt, of Hunt's Court, had a son named William, and Christopher Anderson and others have fixed on him as the Translator; but this William was alive in 1542, while the other was put to death at Vilvorde in 1536. Mr. Demaus 2 has lately discovered in the State Paper Office a letter from Stokesley, Bishop of London to Thomas Crumwell, which throws some light on the

There had also been Tyndales or river lands which formed part of who were farmers at Milksham the manor of Hurst. Court, in the adjoining parish of Stinchcombe, and there was a Richard Tyndale, who held some reclaimed

2 "William Tyndale, a biography," quite a model in brevity, clearness, and research.

question. The purport of the bishop's epistle is to ask a grant of a farm to one of his servants, and in pressing his suit he characterizes a rival suppliant in these significant words— "He that sueth unto you hath a kinsman called Edward Tyndale (brother to Tyndale the arch-heretic), and under-receiver of the lordship of Berkeley, which may and daily doth promote his kinsfolk to the king's farms." The Marquis of Berkeley, who died in 1492, left his estates to Henry VII, and Edward Tyndale collected the royal rents, having been nominated to the office by letters patent in 1519. The "Receiver" got also a grant of the lease of the manor of Slymbridge in 1529, and this was probably at an earlier time the scene of both his own and his brother's birth, for the family had held some portions of it from the reign of Richard III. These statements, however, are in conflict with the pedigrees concocted for the translator; but Stokesley, who had himself been rector of Slymbridge in 1509, could scarcely be in error, and his precise assertion must be in the meantime regarded as conclusive evidence on the point. Foxe is therefore to be credited, when, because he had not or could not get more definite information, he notes, "Touching the birth and parentage of that blessed martyr of Christ, he was born on the borders of Wales." The surname would indicate that the family originally came from the north of England. There were Lords of Tyndale at an early period; and Adam de Tyndale held a barony under King John. Some of the branches are supposed to have dropped their name from being involved in the Wars of the Roses, and to have adopted the more plebeian appellation of Hitchens, Hutchens, or Hochens. On the title-page of his first avowed publication, the name is "William Tyndale, otherwise called Hichens." The name Hitchin occurs in Doomsday Book, County of Hertford. But this story about the reason of change of the name is said not to be older than the period of Charles II. According to the genealogy given at some length by Anderson and Offor, there had been a Baron de Tyndale of Langley Hall, and from the

1 Annals of the English Bible, 2 Life prefixed to his reprint vol. I, p. 16, &c. London, William of the New Testament, London, Pickering, 1845. 1836.

VI.]

TYNDALE AT OXFORD.

109

second son of the last baron several families, including that of the translator, had sprung. But many points in this genealogy are not at all satisfactory, or beyond dispute. Offor is not to be implicitly followed, and Anderson's hero-worship lulled him into credulity. Both of them relied on some statements made by Oade Roberts, who was collaterally descended from the Tyndales of Hunt's Court.1

As Tyndale was some years younger than Sir Thomas More, who, according to the best account, was born in 1478 (the year then running to Lady day, March 25th), his birth may be placed in 1484 or 1485, a century after Wycliffe's death. He was sent to college at an early age, "brought up from a child in the University of Oxford." According to Wood, he was "trained in grammar, logic, and philosophy in the Mary Magdalene's Hall," founded by Bishop Waynflete in 1448, and commonly called "Grammar Hall," from the prominence given. in it to classical learning, under the tuition of Grocyn, Latimer, and Linacre. His course was of some length-" by long continuance he grew up and increased in the knowledge of tongues and other liberal arts."

But the Bible had already attracted his love and labour. His proficiency was seen not only in common and secular studies, but "specially in knowledge of the Scriptures, whereunto his mind was singularly addicted, insomuch that he read privily to certain students and fellows of Magdalene College 2 some parcel of divinity, instructing them in the knowledge and truth of the Scriptures." His character was in harmony with his pursuits, "his manners and conversation were such that all who knew him respected and esteemed him to be a man of most virtuous disposition and life unspotted." According to Foxe, "he proceeded in degrees of the schools at Oxford"; but Wood writes, "whether he took a degree doth not appear in our registers." The retort of Sir Thomas More is usually supposed to imply that Tyndale had graduated. In showing that

1 British MSS., 9,458. 2A portrait of Tyndale, with a Latin inscription, hangs in the Refec

Museum, Additional

tory of the College. Magdalene Hall was a sort of preparatory school in connection with the larger foundation of Magdalene College.

grace" has various meanings, Tyndale adds in illustration, "In universities many ungracious graces there be gotten"; and More answers with bitter a sneer, He should have made it more plain and better perceived, if he had said, as for example, where his own grace was there granted to be Master of Arts." But such an invective is not positive testimony. There is no ground, however, for supposing that he was expelled from the University on account of holding any novel doctrines; though perhaps he may have incurred some suspicion, as Colet had done by his unscholastic lectures, for Foxe relates, "increasing more and more in learning, and spying his time, he removed thence to the University of Cambridge, whence he made his abode for a certain space," being now "further ripened in the knowledge of God's Word." Erasmus was at Cambridge from 1509 to 1514, and Tyndale may have resolved to study under the most famed scholar of the age.

No record of Tyndale's ordination has been preserved. There is, however, a legend that he was ordained priest to the Nunnery of Lambley on the western border of Northumberland; but according to Warham's register, this Tyndale, who was ordained in St. Bartholomew, Smithfield, on the 11th March, 1502-3, belonged to the diocese of Carlisle, and in that year William Tyndale had not reached the requisite age for orders. Another fiction about him is that, in 1508, he entered as a friar into the Monastery of the Observants at Greenwich. On the title-page of a small folio book named "Sermones de Herolt" (1495), in the library of the Cathedral of St. Paul's, the Rev. R. H. Barham found the inscription, "Charitably pray for the soul of John Tyndale, who gave this book to the Monastery of Greenwich on the day that brother William his son made his profession, in the year 1508." But the inscription does not. help to any identification, and Tyndale's own words, sometimes adduced as collateral proof of the statement, have been misunderstood. In the preface to the "Wicked Mammon," he relates that one William Roye had been with him, and that a year after his departure came over "Jerome, a brother of Greenwich also "—" also," that is, as well as Roye. The two men both belonged to the reformed order of Franciscan friars,