384 ENGLISH BIBLE William Tyudale. dale s NewTes The Printed Bible. It is singular that while France, Spain, and Italy each possessed vernacular Bibles before Henry VIIL began his reign, and Germany had seventeen editions of the Scriptures printed and widely circulated in the German language before Luther was known, yet no English printer attempted to put the familiar English Bible into type. No part of the Bible was printed in English before 1526, no complete Bible before 1535, and none in England before 1538. 1 The first-fruits of the printing press as regards the E U gii s h Bible were the New Testament and the Pentateuch of William Tyndale (1484-1536), which were translated and printed abroad between the years 1524 and 1530. Demaus, in his life of Tyndale, gives reasons for coming to the conclusion that he first formed the intention of trans lating the Bible "about the end of 1522 or beginning of 1523" (Demaus s Life of Tyndale, p. 63, ?*.), at which time he was engaged, as a clergyman of the mature age of thirty -eight, in teaching the children of Sir John Walsh of Little Sodbury, in Gloucestershire, the eldest of whom was only six or seven years of age (ibid, p. 37). Early in 1523 he left Sodbury and went up to London, where he was engaged for six months as chantry priest to the family of Humphrey Monmouth, a city merchant, whose residence was near the Tower. About the end of 1523 Tyndale endeavoured to obtain a home in the household of the learned Tunstall, then bishop of London, it being the custom for bishops of those days to surround themselves with a small court of scholars, chaplains, and assistants, who were maintained out of the revenues of their sees. The bishop was already overburdened, however, with dependents, and though Tyndale carried a translation of an oration of Isocrates in his hand as evidence of his Greek scholarship, he said nothing about his contemplated translation of the New Testament; and being, as he says, " avil-favoured in this world, and without grace in the sight of men, speechless and rude, dull and slow-witted," it is no wonier that the bishop recommended him kindly " to seek in London, where he said I could not lack a service," such as that in which he had already been engaged. Thus it happened that Tyndale left England and went to Germany early in the year 1524, an unknown, an unsuccessful, and a dis appointed man, and yet one whose work during the next two years was to be honoured by every succeeding genera tion of his countrymen, and to give his name a conspicuous place among those of the Reformers (see TYNDALE). The six months which Tyndale had spent in Monmouth s hous3 were probably occupied in preparing himself for his greater undertaking by the translation of the Enchiridion f Erasmus, and " another little treatise," which he left in charge of the merchant. On landing at Hamburg he - g t }^ m straight to Luther " at Wittenberg, according to the unanimous testimony of his contemporaries, and there the work of translation must have been commenced im mediately; for notwithstanding a long journey by land to Cologne, a sufficiently long residence there for the printing of St Matthew and St Mark in one edition, a removal to Worms and the time occupied there in printing another edition of the whole New Testament, the translation was widely circulated in England within less than two years of Tyndale s arrival in Germany. Whether he was in any way assisted by Luther is still a disputed point, as, although Tyndale translated and adapted Luther s prefaces to the several books, and also many of his marginal annotations or " glosses," this does not necessarily indicate any personal influence of the great Reformer, and there is no historical evidence to show that there was any intercourse between 1 It should be mentioned, however, that the popular Golden Leyend contained nearly the whole of the Pentateuch and the Gospel narrative in English, and that this was printed by Caxtou in ] 493. them. What is more certain is that Tyndale was assisted by a Franciscan friar named William Roye, and by * a faithful companion " whose name he does not give, " till that was ended which I could not do alone without one both to write and to help me to compare the texts together." When the work of translation was sufficiently advanced, or when it was completed, Tyndale and Roye removed to Cologne, where it was put to press by Peter Quentel, that printer being chosen perhaps of all in Germany because his partners the Byrckmans were booksellers in London, and would thus be able to set the book in circula tion. The printers began an impression of 3000 in a small quarto size, but the printing had only proceeded as far as the tenth sheet, when any further progress was prohibited by the authorities of the city, Tyudale and Roye being considered as " two English apostates who had been some time at Wittenberg, " and whose work could not but there fore be an evil one. The two Englishmen managed, how ever, to escape higher up the Rhine to Worms, where Luther s influence was much stronger than at Cologne, and they succeeded in carrying with them some, or all, of the 20,000 or 30,000 sheets which had been printed. Instead of completing Quentel s work, Peter Schceffer the Worms printer was employed to print another impression of 3000 in a small octavo size, without prefaces to the books or annotations in the margin, and only having an address " To the Reder " at the end in addition to the New Testament text itself. Both impressions arrived in England early in the summer of 1526, less than two years after Tyndale had quitted its shores, and were put into circulation with more or less secrecy as opportunity offered. The imperfect or quarto impression printed at Cologne is sometimes spoken of by contemporaries as " Matthew and Mark in English" or "the chapters of Matthew;" and Dr Robert Ridley, uncle to Bishop Ridley, writes of (1 the common and vulgar translation of the New Testament into English, done by Mi- William Hichyns otherwise called Mr W. Tyndale, and friar William Roye," distinguishing the two impressions by men tioning " their commentaries and annotations in Matthew and Mark in the first print, as well as their preface," or address to the reader, " in the second print" (Demaus s Life of Tyndale, p. 105). But both these impressions are now so rare that of the first only sixty-two pages of one copy are known (Brit. Mus., Grenv. 12,179), and of the second only one imperfect copy, which is in the library of St Paul s Cathedral, and one perfect copy which is in that of the Baptist college at Bristol. Tyndale s work was, however, reprinted surreptitiously at Antwerp three times before 1528, and again under the editorship of George Joye, 2 one of his former friends, in August 1534. In November 1534 Tyndale himself brought out a revised edition, with translations added of all the Sarum Epistles airl Gospels which were taken from the Old Testament and the Apocryphal books, this edition being also printed at Antwerp by Martin Emperour. In the following year Tyndale once more set forth a revised edition, "fynesshed in the yere of oure Lorde God A.M.D. and xxxv. ;" and this is supposed to have been revised by him while in prison in the castle of Vilvorde, being the last of his labours in con nection with the English Bible. His execution took place on October 6, 1536, and about the same time a small folio reprint of his revised edition of 1534 was brought out in 2 Joye was a rival translator, and although he and Tyndale had_once been friends, they afterwards wrote against each other in exceedingly bitter language. Joye published an English Psalter at Strasburg in 1530, a translation of Isaiah in 1531, and one of Jeremiah in 1534. Tyndale says that he had printed two leaves of a translation of Genesis and sent copies of it to the king and queen, with a request that lie might receive licence to go through the whole Bible. But although lie survived until ]553, Joye s name does not appear again in association
with the work of translation.