xv.] FAILURE OF EFFORTS IN FAVOUR OF TYNDALE. 241 that the Blessed Book, which for eleven years had been produced by strangers, and had reached his fatherland in stealthy and circuitous ways, was now printing in the metropolis. The Bodleian Library possesses a copy. Several editions were issued at Antwerp about this time, as may be seen in Anderson's list.

Though Henry hated Luther with a perfect hatred, he had no reason to hate Tyndale. Tyndale was a Yorkist indeed,1 but the king's mother was Elizabeth of York, the lineal heir; and if he did not approve of the divorce, he certainly would have supported the royal supremacy for the denial of which Fisher and More were both beheaded. The disloyal language of the two spies against the king plainly showed that they belonged to the reactionary party, no member of which could be so deep in the royal confidence as to be trusted with their errand. But Henry had no right to interfere, as he had burned some of the emperor's subjects on a similar charge. Crumwell wrote twice in favour of Tyndale to the Marquis of Bergen-op-Zoom, and to Carondolet, Archbishop of Palermo, and was not listened to. These letters were sent to the care of an English merchant at Antwerp, of the name of Flegge who did what he could; and in sending to Crumwell the answer of the high personages appealed to, he expresses "a hope that it may be to the king's pleasure and yours," implying that the king had acquiesced in his minister's interference for the release of Tyndale.

At this time, Coverdale, under Crumwell's protection, had finished his translation of the entire Bible, to be dedicated, within a brief time after, to King Henry, and at length to be authorized by him. But Tyndale's treatises must have provoked many to hostility, for they were trenchant and unsparing, and bore hard, like his "Practice of Prelates," on the popish priesthood. His arrest and death may be traced in all probability

1 "They slew the right king, and set up three false kings in a row, Henrys IV, V, VI, by which mischievous sedition, they caused half England to be slain up." VOL. I.

Q

Tyndale could not like the Lancastrian kings, for besides being usurpers, two of them had been such persecutors. Works, vol. II, pp. 53, 224, Parker Society edition.

to ecclesiastical malignity, which slowly and secretly compassed its end without caring to consult the king or his ministers, who, from political complications, at home and abroad, were helpless to interpose in favour of any relaxation with Charles or his Regent. There were 72,000 executions in England during Henry's reign, and a life more or less could not be felt by the king or his council to be of any great moment, especially the life of one so friendless and so long absent from the island. One of Tyndale's letters, written in prison to the governor, the Marquis of Bergen-op-Zoom, whose favour for him Crumwell had already asked, has been discovered, and a portion of it has been already quoted. The noble-hearted prisoner was so reduced as in his cold and rags to beg with touching and mournful earnestness, "your lordship, and that by the Lord Jesus, that if I am to remain here during the winter, you will request the procureur to be kind enough to send me from my goods which he has in his possession, a warmer cap, for I suffer extremely from cold in the head, being afflicted with a perpetual catarrh, which is considerably increased in the cell. A warmer coat also, for that which I have is very thin; also a piece of cloth to patch my leggings; my shirts are also worn out. He has also a wollen shirt of mine, if he will be kind enough to send it. I have also with him leggings of thicker cloth for putting on above; he also has warmer caps for wearing at night."1 At length a commission was named for the trial of Tyndale, and it comprehended four divines from the University of Louvain. There were long written discussions that passed from the prison to Louvain, for Tapper and Lathomus were no mean antagonists. Ruwart Tapper was a subtle scholastic, and Lathomus had attacked Erasmus, and affirmed that a knowledge of Hebrew and Greek was not necessary to the study of Scripture. In 1528 the divines of Louvain had sent a letter of congratulation to the Archbishop of St. Andrews on the burning of Patrick Hamilton.2 Vaughan, who had now returned from England, in a letter to Crumwell from Antwerp, April 13th, expresses some hope for the prisoner. "If now you send me but your letter to the Privy 1 See p. 211. 2 Foxe, vol. IV, p. 561.

Xv.]

HIS MARTYRDOM.

243

Council, I could deliver Tyndale from the fire; see it come by time, or else it will be too late." The envoy spoke his own wishes, and overrated his influence.

Tyndale could have but little hope himself; for even in England he would have been in serious peril, and he must often have thought in those dreary months of his own words written eight years before: "If they burn me, they shall do none other thing than I look for." His condemnation and martyrdom were certain from the first. His doom was pronounced on the 10th of August, and he was then "degraded, and condemned into the hands of the secular power." On Friday, the 6th of October, 1536, he was first strangled-for the law of the Low Countries was more merciful than that of England-and then burned. At the moment before his death, he cried with fervent zeal and a loud voice at the stake, "Lord, open the king of England's eyes." According to Foxe, his life and words produced a deep impression on his jailor, his jailor's daughter, and others who were permitted to visit him. And so died "one, who, for his notable powers and travel, may well be called the apostle of England in this our later age.”

And truly Tyndale did an apostle's work, in presenting divine truth to the souls of men, and he was blessed at the same time in suffering all manner of evil during such work with "patience and wonders"-"the signs of an apostle," for he was filled with the true spirit, endowed with gifts that descended from Pentecost, and set apart by a nobler consecration than the laying-on of hands. Men so thoroughly furnished and absorbed in evangelical toil and travail are surely "the messengers of the churches, and the glory of Christ." To labour for the Divine Master is one phase of conformity to Him who "came not to be ministered unto, but to minister"; but to suffer also for Him who yielded His life for us, seals and completes the assimilation. "And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them."

While Wycliffe and Tyndale may have some unavoidable resemblance in their translation of simple historical clauses, the Latin being at the same time a version from the Greek; the following four verses of a peculiar structure will show the independence of Tyndale :—

GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE, CHAPTER I, VERSES 1-4.

WYCLIFFE.

Forsothe for manye men enforceden to ordeyne the tellyng of thingis, whiche ben fillid in vs, as thei that seyn atte the bigynnyng, and weren ministris of the word, bitaken, it is seen also to me, hauyuge alle thingis diligentli bi ordre, to write to thee, thou best Theofile, that thou knowe the treuthe of tho wordis, of whiche thou art lerned.

TYNDALE.

For as moche as many have taken in hond to compyle a treates off thoo thynges, which are surely knowen amonge vs, even as they declared them vnto vs, which from the begynynge sawe them with their eyes, and were ministers at the doyng: I determined also, as sone as I had searched out diligently all thinges from the begynynge, that then I wolde wryte vnto the, goode Theophilus, that thou myghtest knowe the certente off thoo thinges, whereof thou arte informed.

IN

CHAPTER XVI.

N his introduction to the first edition of the Novum Instrumentum, or Greek New Testament, Erasmus, while vindicating the right of all to read the Scriptures, and maintaining that they should be translated into all languages, adds as a climax, “and be read and understood by Scots and Irishmen." These nations, though they were to him the lowest in the scale of civilization, might have a translated Bible, and next to them he places Greeks and Saracens. But copies of the Wycliffite version had already been carried into the northern kingdom, and the translation of Tyndale soon found its way into Scotland, probably as early as to England, for Scotland had a close mercantile connection with the Low Countries, especially with the towns of Middleburg and Campvere. Hacket, the English ambassador at Antwerp, who had fallen into such trouble about Tyndale's New Testament, wrote to Wolsey on the 20th of February, 1527, that he had advertised Brian Tuke, on the 4th of January of the same year, that there were "divers merchants of Scotland that bought many of such like books, and took them into Scotland, a part to Edinburgh, and most part to the town of St. Andrews,"1 adding, "that he had expected to make a seizure at Barrow; but that to his chagrin the ships had left before his arrival." 2 The allusion is

1 St. Andrews was then the capital of Scotland, and Glasgow ranked only as eleventh in the taxation list of royal burghs. In the date of its charter it is the twenty-first, and St.

Andrews the seventh. Its university was founded in 1411, that of Glasgow in 1450.

2 Cotton MSS., Galba., B. VI, fol. 4.