Book of Fire (54 page)

Authors: Brian Moynahan

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BOOK: Book of Fire

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More makes his chilling prediction of John Frith’s future in vol. 9, p. 122, ll. 18–21: ‘I fere me sore that Cryst wyll kyndle a fyre of fagottes for hym, & make hym therin swete the bloude out of hys body here, and strayte frome hense send hys soule for euer into the fyre of hell.’ He confided his own fear of the defeat of Catholicism in a world with ‘no chrysten countreyes left’ in vol. 13, p. 173.

For Thomas Philips, the inmate of the Tower who helped Frith, see vol. 9, p. 166 – ‘Thomas Philippis of London letherseller, mowe prysoner in ye towre’ – and the note to 126/12 on pp. 372–4.

The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More
, edited by E. F. Rogers, was published at Princeton in 1947.

Contemporary accounts of
The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey
, by George Cavendish, and
The Life of Sir Thomas More
,by William Roper, have been edited in one volume by Richard S.
Sylvester and Davis P. Harding (New Haven and London, 1962). The two men have also been compared in
The Statesman and the Fanatic
by Jasper Ridley (London, 1982).
The Life of Thomas More
by Peter Ackroyd (London, 1998) and
Thomas More
by Richard Marius (New York, 1984) are excellent modern biographies.

For Tyndale’s predecessors, see F. D. Matthew’s
The English Works of John Wycliffe
(London, 1880), J. A. Robson’s
Wycliffe and the Oxford Schools
(Cambridge, Mass., 1961), J. Stacey’s
John Wycliffe and Reform
(Philadelphia, 1964) and J. Bale’s
Brief Chronicle of Sir John Oldcastle
(Parker Society, vol. 36, London, 1902).

Tyndale’s meddlesome colleague Joye is the subject of
George Joye
by C. Butterworth and A. Chester (Philadelphia, 1962). F. L. Clark writes on
William Warham: Archbishop of Canterbury 1504–1532
(Oxford, 1993). His successor is the subject of
Thomas Cranmer
by Diarmaid MacCulloch (New Haven and London, 1996), and of J. Strype’s two-volume
Memorials of Archbishop Cranmer
(London, 1812). The question of the sacraments is in
The Mass and the English Reformers
by C. W. Dugmore (London, 1958).
The Letters of Erasmus
were translated and edited by F. M. Nichols in three volumes (London, 1901–18).

Humanism
,
Reform and Reformation: The Career of Bishop John Fisher
, edited by B. Bradshaw and E. Duffy (Cambridge, 1989), portrays the fiery bishop of Rochester.
The English Works of John Fisher
, edited by J. E. B. Mayor, was published in London in 1876. See, too,
The Works and Days of John Fisher: An Introduction to the Position of St John Fisher
by E. Surtz (Cambridge, Mass., 1967).
Henry VII’s Conservative Scholar
by Andrew A. Chibi (Berne, 1997) deals with Bishop John Stokesley and the divorce, royal supremacy and doctrinal reform. The work of John Frith is introduced and edited by N. T. Wright (London, 1978).
The Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell
are the subject of two volumes
edited by R. B. Merriman (Oxford, 1902); see also D. Burton’s
Thomas Cromwell
(London, 1982), A. G. Dickens’s
Thomas Cromwell and the English Reformation
(London, 1959). Foxe deals with Monmouth in
Acts and Monuments
in vol. iv, p. 617, with Bilney at length in pp. 619–56 of vol. iv (London, 1837 edn), as well as with Frith, Barnes, et al. Bilney is also covered in
The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker
by the indefatigable J. Strype (Oxford, 1821, vol. I, pt I).

The Reformation Parliament
, dealing with political and constitutional change, is by S. E. Lembert (Cambridge, 1970).
The Reformation and the English People
is by J. J. Scarisbrick (Oxford, 1984). E. Duffy’s
The Stripping of the Altars
(New Haven and London, 1992) powerfully portrays
Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580
, as does R. Finucane’s
Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England
(London, 1977). G. R. Elton’s body of work includes
England under the Tudors
(1955),
Policy and Police
(1972),
Reform and Renewal
(1973) and
Reform and Reformation
(1977).

For further views, see J. J. Scarisbrick’s
Henry VIII
(London, 1970), Q. Skinner’s
The Foundations of Modern Political Thought
, vol. 2,
The Age of Reformation
(Cambridge, 1978);
The English Reformation
by A. G. Dickens ( 1964).

For Anne Boleyn and her sympathy for reform, see
Anne Boleyn and Reform
by Maurice Dowling in the
Journal of Ecclesiastical History
, vol. 35, no. 1, January 1984. The
Ecclesiastical Memorials of John Strype
, vol. I, pt I (Oxford, 1822), includes further detail on Anne Boleyn, and much else besides.
The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn
is by R. M. Warnicke (Cambridge, 1898);
The Six Wives of Henry VIII
are the subject of books by Alison Weir (London, 1991) and Antonia Fraser (London, 1992);
Anne Boleyn
is by E. W. Ives (Oxford, 1986).

On Thomas Cromwell, see
The Life and Letters of Thomas
Cromwell
by Roger B. Merriman (Oxford, 1902);
Thomas Cromwell
by B. W. Beckingrale (London, 1978);
Treason in Tudor England
by Lacey Baldwin Smith (London, 1986).

For biblical translation and history, see:
English Biblical Translation
by A. C Partridge (London, 1973);
The English Bible
, two vols, by J. Edie (London, 1876):
The Literary Lineage of the King James Bible
by C. C. Butterworth (Philadelphia, 1941);
A History of the Bible as Literature
, vol. 1,
From Antiquity to 1700
,by David Norton (Cambridge, 1993); R. A. Knox’s
On Englishing the Bible
(London, 1949); W. Schwarz’s
Principles and Problems of Biblical Translation
(Cambridge, 1955); F. F. Bruce’s
The English Bible, A History of Translations
(London, 1961);
The Semantics of Biblical Language
by J. Barr (New York, 1960); H. W. Robinson’s
The Bible in its Ancient and English Versions
(1940).
The West from the Reformation to the Present Day
(Cambridge, 1963); and
Wide as the Waters
by Benson Bobrick (New York, 2001). For a comparison between ancient and modern translations, see the
Eight Translation New Testament
(Wheaton, Ill., 1974). This gives, on the same page, The King James Version, The Living Bible, Phillips Modern English, Revised Standard Version, Today’s English Version, New International Version, Jerusalem and the New English Bible.

The early history of printing, as well as being essential to this book, is remarkable in its own right for the speed of progress. Within a generation, italic, Roman and bold typefaces had appeared in upper and lower case and in a variety of fonts; books were illustrated by woodcuts and engravings; colour printing was in use, together with bindings both plain and elaborate; and books of greatly differing size were being sold at the great (and surviving) Frankfurt and Leipzig Fairs.
The Reformation and the Book 1517–1570
edited by Jean-Françoise Gilmont (Aldershot, 1998);
The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe
by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein (Cambridge, 1983);
The Coming of the Book
by Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin (London, 1976) provide overviews.
The Printed Bible
by Michael H. Black in vol. 3 of the
Cambridge History of the Bible
(Cambridge, 1963) covers early printed Bibles.
Worldly Goods
by Lisa Jardine (London, 1996) is set in a Renaissance context. The subject of F. C. Avis’s
England’s Use of Antwerp Printers 1500–1540
in
Gutenberg-Jahrbuch
(1973) is self-explanatory, as is H. S. Bennett’s
English Books and Readers 1475–1557
(Cambridge, 1952). E. G. Duff ’s
The Printers
,
Stationers and Bookbinders of Westminster and London from 1476 to 1535
was published in London (1906) and reprinted in New York (1977).
Antwerp
,
Dissident Typographical Centre: The Role of Antwerp Printers in the Religious Conflicts in England
published by the Plantin-Moretus Museum at Antwerp (1994) shows how the Antwerp printers, having benefited from printing illegal Protestant books in English, switched to Catholic books after these were banned in turn under Elizabeth I.

On smuggling and shipping, see
The Maritime Trade of the East Anglian Ports
by N. J. Williams (Oxford, 1988);
The Ship in the Medieval Economy
by Richard W. Unger (London, 1980); and
English Merchant Shipping 1460–1540,
by Dorothy Burwash (Newton Abbot, 1969).

The Tyndale Society’s excellent Journal includes articles on the
Stuttgart Tyndale Bible
, no. 7, July 1997;
Cuthbert Tunstall, Tyndale’s ‘Still Saturn’
, by Margaret Clark, vol. 3, 1998;
William Tyndale and the Making of the English Churches
, by David Daniell, no 9, April 1998; and much else of interest.

Of particular note is
How Much of the King James Bible is William Tyndale’s?
by John Nielson and Royal Skousen, no. 3, 1998. This shows an average of 83.7 per cent of the King James New Testament to be found in Tyndale, 2.4 per cent in Coverdale, 2.2 per cent in the Great Bible, 4.7 per cent in the Geneva Bible, 2.2 per cent in the Bishops’ Bible, 1.9 per cent in the Rheims Bible, and 2.8 per cent to be original to the King James. Of the Old Testament books that Tyndale translated, 75.7 per cent of the
King James is found in Tyndale, 6.1 per cent in Coverdale, 9.6 per cent in the Geneva Bible, and 8.7 per cent is original to the King James.

As well as the debt owed to the Society, and to Professor Daniell, I am again grateful for the skilful research supplied by former students of Clive Holmes at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, in this case my niece, Victoria Stiles.

NOTES

Preface On the Burning of Heretics

1
A spring halfway down the hill at Lutterworth is said to have begun flowing after one of Wycliffe’s fingers fell on the spot as his bones were carried down the slope. This local legend is one of which Wycliffe himself, hostile to superstition and loose talk of miracles, would heartily disapprove.

1 Youth

1
Cardinal’s College was renamed Christ Church after Wolsey’s fall, and remains the grandest of the Oxford colleges.

2 Decision

1
And to Continental ones, of course. Erasmus not only wrote but spoke in Latin during the several years he spent in England. In the Latin-speaking academic and government circles in which he moved there was no need for him to learn English.

2
Hooper was appointed bishop of Gloucester in 1550. Five years later, when Catholicism was (temporarily) restored in England, Hooper went to the stake in the city as a heretic.

3
Unnamed by Foxe, but probably William Latimer, a friend of Erasmus – and of More – who had taught at Oxford while Tyndale was an undergraduate, and who held two Gloucestershire livings in his retirement.

13 The Flight to Hamburg

1
The Turks did not leave Belgrade until 1867.

2
In fact, the work extended over a very long period and was not all done at Alexandria.

3
Tyndale certainly thought them to be the work of Moses. In the nineteenth century, however, it became widely accepted that the Pentateuch was compiled from previously written documents dating from the ninth to the fifth centuries BC.

17 The Confutation

1
The chancellor, Thomas Parker, failed to have the sentence of exhumation and burning imposed by the secular arm, and the very large fine of £300 was imposed on him for his negligence.

20 ‘A fellow Englishman, who is everywhere and nowhere’

1
The Apocrypha, or ‘hidden things’, are the biblical books accepted by the early Church as part of the Greek Septuagint, but not included in the Hebrew Bible. Luther included the Apocrypha (1 and 2 Esdras apart) as an appendix to his 1534 Bible as ‘useful and good to be read’, and it is likely that Tyndale would have done the same had he completed his work. Later Protestant leaders, wishing to return to strict biblical authority stripped of later additions, did not recognise it as true scripture.

23 ‘Though I gave my body even that I burned …’

1
James Beaton, the archbishop of St Andrews, escaped the reformers’ revenge. His successor and nephew, the cardinal
archbishop David Beaton, was hunted down and murdered in his castle of St Andrews in 1546 by Protestant conspirators dressed as building workers. He locked himself in his apartments but they smoked him out by crying ‘fire!’ and burning coals at the door. ‘I am a priest,’ he cried as he opened the door. ‘Ye will not slay me!’ But they did, John Knox, the great Scottish reformer, among them.

INDEX