William Tyndale is the famous pioneer translator of the Bible into English in the sixteenth century. Tyndale’s translation has had an immense influence and has rightly earned him the title of ‘the father of the English Bible’. It could almost be said that every English New Testament until the last century was merely a revision of Tyndale’s. Some 90 per cent of his words passed into the King James Version and about 75 per cent into the Revised Standard Version.

Tyndale studied at Oxford University then spent some time at Cambridge. At a later date he expressed his dissatisfaction with the teaching of theology at the universities. ‘In the universities they have ordained that no man shall look on the Scripture until he be noselled in heathen learning eight or nine years, and armed with false principles with which he is clean shut out of the understanding of the Scripture.’

In 1521 Tyndale left the university world to join the household of Sir John Walsh at Little Sodbury Manor, near Chipping Sodbury in south Gloucester. It is not certain what role Tyndale played in the household, but he may have been the chaplain (he was ordained at some point) or a tutor to the children or a secretary to Sir John. Many of the local clergy came to dine at the manor. This gave Tyndale the opportunity both to be shocked by their ignorance of the Bible and to become embroiled in controversy with them. One such cleric declared that ‘We were better to be without God’s laws than the pope’s’, to which Tyndale responded: ‘If God spare my life, ere many years pass, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost’. Here Tyndale was echoing Erasmus’s famous wish in the preface to his Greek New Testament: ‘I would to God that the ploughman would sing a text of the Scripture at his plough and that the weaver would hum them to the tune of his shuttle.’ Tyndale had ‘perceived by experience how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text’.

Tyndale left Little Sodbury Manor in search of ecclesiastical approval for his projected translation. In 1523 he went to London and obtained an interview with the bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall. This was a shrewd choice as Tunstall was a scholar, but unfortunately he was more concerned to prevent the growth of Lutheranism than to promote the English Bible and Tyndale received no encouragement from him. Eventually Tyndale ‘understood at the last not only that there was no room in my lord of London’s palace to translate the new testament, but also that there was no place to do it in all England’. He was forced to become ‘God’s Outlaw’, as a film of his life was entitled. With the backing of various merchants, Tyndale resolved to leave the country in order to engage in the work of translation. So in 1524 he sailed for Germany, never to return. In May 1535 Tyndale was betrayed by a fellow Englishman, Henry Phillips. He was taken to the state prison in the castle of Vilvorde, near Brussels. After more than a year of confinement, Tyndale was put on trial in August 1536 and condemned as a heretic, after which he was formally defrocked and excommunicated. His execution was deferred for another two months. Early in October (traditionally on the 6th), having refused to recant, he was strangled and then burnt at the stake in Brussels. His last words were reported to be ‘Lord, open the king of England’s eyes’. Whether or not this prayer was answered, Henry VIII, encouraged by *Cranmer, permitted the publication of English translations of the Bible from 1535, all drawing heavily on Tyndale. These helped to prepare the ground for the introduction of Protestant ideas in the reign of Edward VI.

Tony Lane