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William Tindale—First English Puritan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

M. M. Knappen
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago

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.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1936

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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. 89Google 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.

4 Acts and Monuments, ed. Townsend, ; 8 vols.; London, 1828, V, 114–30Google Scholar. For the 1563 version, see Arber, , op. cit.Google Scholar

5 The Church History of Britain, ed. Brewer, , 6 vols., Oxford, 1845, III, 161–5Google Scholar. The first edition was published in London in 1665. The rival history of Heylyn, Thomas called Ecclesia restaurata, London, 1661Google Scholar, begins with the reign of Edward VI, and so does not deal with Tindale.

6 E. g., Lingard, John, History of England, 10 vols., London, 1855, V, 54.Google Scholar

7 The Union of the Two Noble and Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York.

8 Reprint from Kennet's folio edition of 1719, London, 1872, pp. 469–70, 591. The first edition appeared in 1649.

9 Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, ed. Lathbury, , 9 vols., London, 1852, IV, 202–3.Google Scholar

10 Guppy, Henry, William Tindale and the Earlier Translations of the Bible into EnglishGoogle Scholar. Reprinted with additions from The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. IX, no. 2, 07, 1925, Manchester, 1925, pp. 3839.Google Scholar

11 Doctrinal Treatises, 1848Google Scholar; Expositions and Notes, 1849Google Scholar; Answer to Sir Thomas More, 1850Google Scholar; all edited by Henry Walter and published at Cambridge for the Society.

12 History of the Church of England from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction, 3rd ed. revised, 6 vols., Oxford, 1895, I, 37.Google Scholar

13 William Tindale, London. The revised work, edited by Lovett, Richard, London, 1904Google Scholar, remains the best biography available.

14 Of these the most important is the identification by the Dutch bibliographer, Miss M. E. Kronenberg, of the printer of the “Marburg” volumes (those works bearing some such colophon as “by me, Hans Luft, of Marburg in the land of Hesse”) as Johan Hoochstraten of Antwerp. “De geheimzinnige drukkers Andam Anonymous te Bazel en Hans Luft te Marburg onmaskerd (1526–1535),” Het Boek, VIII (1919), 241–80Google Scholar. Summarized by the same author in “Notes on English Printing in the Low Countries (Early Sixteenth Century),” Library, Fourth Series, IX (1929), 139163Google Scholar. So far as I know, this effectually eliminates all evidence of any stay by Tindale in the university town, though Guppy, (op. cit., p. 44)Google Scholar retains that story in his account.

A few additional details concerning Tindale's last trial are given by Frederieq, Paul, “La fin de William Tindale,” in Melanges d'histoire offerts à M. Charles Semont, Paris, 1913, pp. 473479Google Scholar.

The entries concerning Tindale in the Register of the University of Oxford, ed. Boase, , “Oxford Historical Society,” Oxford, 1885, pp. ixx, 80Google Scholar, which, enable us to date his university career, are incorporated by Lovett in his 1904 edition of Demaus work, pp. 38–39.

For Preserved Smith's contribution, see below, n. 23.

15 Anderson, , pp. ixxiGoogle Scholar. In fairness to Demaus it must be said that this imperialistic strain is not to be found in his work, and that he recognized the historian's obligation to give both sides of the story, though he was by no means successful in attaining this ideal.

16 History of England from the Fall of Wolsey, 12 vols., London, 18561870, II, 3032.Google Scholar

17 Jacobs, H. E., A Study in Comparative Symbolics: The Lutheran, Movement in England during the Reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI and Its Literary Monuments, Philadelphia, 1908, pp. 1438Google Scholar; Gruber, L. F., The First English New Testament and Luther, Burlington, Iowa, 1928Google Scholar; Gerberich, A. H., Luther and the English Bible, Lancaster, Pa., 1933.Google Scholar

18 Guppy, , op. cit., p. 41.Google Scholar

19 The Athenaeum, nos. 2999 and 3001, April 18 and 05 2, 1885.Google Scholar

20 E. g., Chambers, R. W., “The Continuity of English Prose from Alfred to More and his School,” in the Introduction to Harpsfleld's Life of More, Early English Text Society, Original Series, no. 186, London, 1932Google Scholar. The best summary of the Tindale-More controversy is in Taft, A. I.'s introduction to his edition of More's Apologye, Early English Text Society, Original Series, no. 180, London, 1930.Google Scholar

21 The Beginning of the New Testament Translated by William Tyndale, Facsimile of Cologne fragment, Oxford, 1926, p. xix.Google Scholar

22 Joye, , An Apology … to satisfy, if it may be, W. Tindede, ed. Arber, , “English Scholar's Library,” Birmingham, 1882, p. 17.Google Scholar

23 Smith, PreservedEnglishmen at Wittenberg in the Sixteenth Century,” English Historical Review, XXXVI (1921), 422433CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Roy's name and that of an Englishman named Daltici or Daltin appear in the book as matriculating in 1525 and 1524 respectively. The latter may be an anagram, for Tindale.

24 E. g., Hooper, to Bullinger, , 02 5, 1550Google Scholar, Original Letters, ed. Robinson, , “Parker Society,” Cambridge, 1846, I, 76.Google Scholar

25 Obedience of a Christian Man, Doctrinal Treatises, pp. 201202.Google Scholar

26 Demaus, , Hugh Latimer, London, 1869, pp. 2729Google Scholar. Demaus is careful to point out that the Cambridge reformers did not become wholly Lutheran in doctrine in these early years, but he speaks of them as under Lutheran influence, and makes no effort to follow the Erasmian influence beyond the introduction of Luther's teaching. Smith, Preserved, Age of the Reformation, New York, 1920, p. 281Google Scholar, also speaks of the early university reformers as Lutherans.

27 “No treacherous intrigues ever shook his loyalty to his king,” Westcott, B. F., A Getieral View of the History of the English Bible, rev. ed., ed. Wrisht, , New York, 1916, p. 51.Google Scholar

28 Ric. II, st. I, c. 2.Google Scholar

29 Obedience, p. 151.Google Scholar

30 Strangely enough, though More touches on the point of obedience in his Confutation, Works, London, 1557, pp. 257, 364Google Scholar, he does not charge Tindale with this inconsistency, but prefers to consider the whole tract as an incitement to insurrection.

31 Letters and Papers … of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer, J. S., Gairdner, James, and others; London, 1862, etc., VIII, 312, no. 823.Google Scholar

32 Demaus, , Tindale, pp. 357–8. Italics mine.Google Scholar

33 Obedience, p. 229.Google Scholar

34 Answer to More, pp. 5960.Google Scholar