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William Tindale—First English Puritan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
Four hundred years ago this autumn William Tindale was executed at Vilvorde, a few miles south of Antwerp. So ended an adventurous career which began some forty years earlier in the soft western vales of Gloucestershire. The family acres, while not too broad, made possible a university education, which resulted in the youth becoming an Oxford M. A. in 1515. More important, it brought him in contact with the works of Erasmus, whose ardent disciple he became. Settling in his native region as chaplain and tutor to one of the important county families, he soon distinguished himself as a champion of the new learning. In this work he found himself handicapped by lack of suitable English books. He therefore translated his Dutch master's Enchiridion, and resolved to answer the great humanist's call for vernacular scriptures available to the masses. But the church authorities of his diocese were hostile, and, in any case, for such work he needed greater facilities than those of a country parish.
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- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1936
References
1 It is very unlikely that Tindale was ever a student at Cambridge. The tradition that he was rests on the information supplied by Foxe's anonymous west country friend, who knew that Tindale had been a member of one university, and thought it was Cambridge. As a Magdalen man Foxe knew that Tindale had been at Oxford, and in hisi later narrative inserted the correct identification, but allowed the story of a stay at Cambridge to stand also. See the two versions of Poxe's narrative printed in parallel columns in Arber, E.'s First Printed English New Testament, London, 1871, pp. 8–9Google Scholar. Bale, who was a Cambridge man, and nearly contemporaneous with the time of Tindale's supposed study there, states that he was trained at Oxford, “Oxonii ab adolescente studiis incumbens.” Illustrium Maioris Britanniae scriptorum, [Wesel], 1548, fol. 221.Google Scholar
2 So far as can be discovered this was never printed under Tindale's name. It has been suggested that the abridged version published by Coverdale in 1545 (Writings and Translations, ed. Pearson, , “Parker Society,” Cambridge, 1844)Google Scholar, is really Tindale's. In view of the fact that Coverdale is known to have been an associate of Tindale, and that he was not a particularly original man, this is not impossible. But a comparison of this text with the one published by Wynken de Worde in London in 1533 (reprinted, London, 1905) shows that there is a direct dependency. Since there is no known connection between de Worde and Tindale, who by 1533 had been nine years on the Continent, it does not seem probable that there is much connection between Tindale's version and Coverdale's.
3 Op. cit. An enlarged and revised edition was published at Basel in 1559 under the title of Scriptorum illustrium Maioris Brytawniae … catalogos.
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8 Reprint from Kennet's folio edition of 1719, London, 1872, pp. 469–70, 591. The first edition appeared in 1649.
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28 Ric. II, st. I, c. 2.Google Scholar
29 Obedience, p. 151.Google Scholar
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33 Obedience, p. 229.Google Scholar
34 Answer to More, pp. 59–60.Google Scholar