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Home , Bernard Cottret, Coverdale Bible, George Joye, Myles Coverdale, Richard Taverner

LONG TRAVAIL AND GREAT PAYNES STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN RELIGIOUS REFORMS

VOLUME 1

Editor

Irena Backus, University of Geneva

Board of Consulting Editors

Michael J.B. Allen, University of California, Los Angeles Guy Bedouelle, Universite de Fribourg Emidio Campi, University of Zurich Bernard Cottret, Universite de -Versailles Denis Crouzet, Universite de Paris IV-Sorbonne Luc Deitz, Bibliotheque nationale de Luxembourg Paul Grendler (Emeritus), University of Toronto Ralph Keen, University of Iowa Heiko Oberman, University ofArizona, Tucson Maria-Cristina Pitassi, University of Geneva Herman Selderhuis, Theological University Apeldoom Steinmetz, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina Christoph Strohm, Ruhr-Universitdt Bochum Mark Vessey, University of British Columbia Lee Palmer Wandel, University o.fWisconsin-Madison David Wright, University of Edinburgh LONG TRAVAIL AND GREAT PAYNES A Politics of Revision

by VIVIENNE WESTBROOK Assistant Professor Renaissance Literature at National Taiwan University

SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. A C.l.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-90-481-5699-3 ISBN 978-94-017-2115-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-2115-8

Printed on acidJree paper

AII Rights Reserved © 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2001 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE vii (1494-1536) xiv (1495-1553) xiv JOHN ROGERS (1500? - 1555) xv RICHARD TAVERNER (1505-1575) xv (1488-1568) xvi EDMUND BECKE (fl1550) xvii WILLIAM WHITTINGHAM (1520-1579) xviii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. xix INTRODUCTION xxi A SHORT HISTORY OF THE xxiii THE REFORMATION OF THE CHURCH xxvi THE QUESTION OF LITERACY xxix EDUCATION xxxv PREACHING AND THE PLACE OF TEXT xxxvii ENGLISH BIBLE AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICE xxxviii CHAPTER 1 : GEORGE JOYE'S NEW TEST AMENT CHAPTER 2: MYLES COVERDALE'S 14 COVERDALE'S PENITENTIAL 22 CHAPTER 3 : JOHN ROGERS AND THE THOMAS 36 THE MATTHEW BIBLE PENTATEUCH 1537 45 CHAPTER 4 : RICHARD TAVERNER'S REVISION 78 CHAPTER 5 : EDMUND BECKE'S REVISION 113 BECKE'S PROPHETIC BOOKS 119 CHAPTER 6 : WILLIAM WHITTINGHAM'S 127 CHAPTER 7: THE ANNOTATIONS 143 ANNOTATIONS TO THE REVELATION 144 POWER IN THE MARGINS OF THE GENEVA BIBLE 147 REVELATION APARATEXTUALCONCLUSION 174 REFERENCES 181 PREFACE TO THE READER

This study sets out to re-examine some of the early English printed that have been neglected by the most influential Bible historians. A great deal of what is frequently said about the history of the printed English Bible has been indebted to a small number of nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholars. Westcott's General View is still unrivalled in scope and depth as a history of the English Bible.1 Moulton's collations of the lesser-known biblical texts were an enormous resource to Westcott and often formed the basis of Westcott's conclusions.2 Fry's important study of Coverdale's Bibles, in particular, was an enormous contribution to our understanding of those texts.3 It provided Mozely with much of what he needed to know for his important book on the subject.4 The effort that has gone into documenting these Bibles is only to be glimpsed from the working files of bibliophiles like Offor. 5 The Darlow and Moule catalogue6and Pollard and Redgrave's Short Title Catalogue7are two invaluable standard reference works for a student of the English Bible. Two factors must be born in mind, however, when we approach Westcott's work. The first factor is that Westcott was tracing a general history of the English Bible up to 1611. The perception of the King James Authorised Version as the definitive English Bible dictated the agenda of Westcott's history, and has done subsequent histories. English Bibles were considered important

IB.F. Westcott, A General View of the History of the English Bible, 3rd ed., rev., W.A. Wright. : Macmillan, 1905. 2W.F. Moulton, The History of the English Bible, 5th ed., rev., J.H. Moulton and W.F. Moulton. London: Charles H. Kelly, 1911. IF. Fry, A Description of the 1539 and the Six Editions of Cranmer's Bible, 1540 and 1541. Bristol: Printed for the Editor, 1862. R4549. 4J.F. Mozley, Coverdale and his Bibles. London: Lutterworth Press, 1953. 5G. Offor, 'Collections for a History of the English Bible 1525-l.679.' BM, Add Ms 26,67()'26,675. &r.H. Darlow and H.F. Moule, Historical Catalogue ofPrinted Editions of the English Bible 1525 1961.rev. A.S. Herbert. London: British and Foreign Bible Society, 1968. 7A.W. Pollard and G R Redgrave, A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in . Scotland. & Ireland, and ofEnglish Books Printed Abroad, 1475-164Q III, : , 1991. Vlll PREFACE TO THE READER

only if they contributed either to the internal history of the , or if they were able to claim precedence in the history of English biblical production. In Westcott's work, therefore, it is no surprise that Bibles that were internally different from the King James Version were given secondary place to those Bibles which bore inherent resemblance to what was perceived to be the finished text, the King James Version. A second factor that scholars should be alerted to is that some of the collations on which Westcott based his verdicts were small. Some Bibles have therefore suffered neglect because of slim and unrepresentative evidence, where larger collations might have shown more agreement with the King James Version than Westcott supposed. Other Bibles have suffered from the very method by which they have been approached. In this study I review some of those neglected texts using substantial collations of my own from first edition texts in the John Rylands Manchester University Library and the British Library. Whilst studies of Reformation Bibles have addressed the implications of Sola Scriptura and the problems of canon, the interpretation of the text evidenced in the application of marginal annotations has rarely been discussed. I will attempt to do that here.s Tyndale's importance as a maker of the English language through his translations has only relatively recently been established by scholars such as Hammond9 and Daniell. 10 Less discussed are Tyndale revisions of his own work, which sometimes displayed less philological accuracy for the sake of making better sense. I I This tendency was more fully developed by sixteenth-century revisers of Tyndale's work after his martyrdom in 1536. Nida's contribution to this field of study suggested methods for organising the kinds of decisions that translators make into categories. 12 Nida's is one method of organising this material, but as he has said: "revisions are in some ways a good deal more difficult than original translations, and hence often involve very complex procedures, usually because of vested interests".13 Nida makes no distinction between the process of translation and that of revision, though two processes do clearly require different treatments. This study is about sixteenth-century revision, and it would be an injustice to Tyndale, and to Coverdale, to suggest

8 See R. A. Muller. 'Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation: The View from the Middle Ages.' in Muller. R.A. and J.L.Thompson. eds. Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation. : Cambridge University Press, 1996. 3n. 9G. Hammond. The Making of the English Bible. Manchester: Carcanet, 1988. 100. Daniell. William Tyndale: A Biography. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994. 11M. Weitzman has described Tyndale recently as a maximalist translator. See his article: 'Translating the : the Achievement of William Tyndale', Reformation 1 (1996) 165- 180. 12E. A. Nida. Toward a Science of Translating with Special Reference to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translating. Leiden: Brill, 1964. iibid. Nida goes on to say that "no attempt is made to distinguish between the two processes". 245. PREF ACE TO THE READER ix

that the revisers of their work were doing the same kind of thing as Tyndale and Coverdale had done when they made their translations. Whilst the main preoccupation of Bible scholars has been to trace internal histories and to establish importance on that basis, there are many more ways to approach a sixteenth-century biblical text. This study therefore attempts to approach the material from alternative perspectives. Even in the case of the perceived landmarks of English biblical history, a great deal of erudite scholarship has documented the changes that occur, but often these are presented in the form of raw data with very little discussion of the implications of those changes for the reader. In this study I uncover differences between biblical texts that have not been registered or discussed previously, and I consider the implications of revision for a reading of the texts. The extent to which these revisions might be accounted for by "vested interest" or agenda in the sixteenth century is a second consideration of the study. The title of this book is drawn from Edmund Becke's prefatory epistle to Prince Edward in his revision of the Matthew Bible, published by John Daye in 1'549. 14 It is a phrase that resounds through the literature of the period. The biblical prefaces are addressed to a variety of audiences: "brethren", "good Christians", "gentle readers". The texts themselves have a variety of uses. When Coverdale prints his Psalms, they are for instruction and prayer; even his Goostly Psalms have the same essential purpose but have musical apparatus to enable memorisation. IS When Crowley, a mid-Tudor gospeller, prints his Psalms in 1540, they are to "delyte".16 The establishment and fortification of Tudor authority between 1530 and 1560 are inextricably linked with the establishment of an 'authoritative' biblical text. 17 Bishop Gardiner was not alone in insisting that mistranslation should be severely punished because it showed a rebellious tendency that might develop into political threat. 18 Despite Gardiner's astute observations about text and context, Taverner, for one, did not subscribe to his agenda. Taverner did not

14E. Becke, "To the moost puisant and mighty prince Edwarde the sixt...After long travail, great paynes and laboures atchieved, with no small expenses and charges, taken and susteyned.. "JRL 4566. 15M.Coverdale's preface to the 1539 Goostly Psalmes indicates Coverdale's reforming purpose in printing them "Seynge then that and as the prophete David sayeth it is so good and pleasaunt a thynge to prayse the Lorde, and so expedient for us to be thankfull, Therefore to geve oure youth of Englonde some occasion to chaunge theyr foule and conupte balettes into swete songes and spirituall Hymnes of Gods honoure .. ". STC 5892.iii.r. 16R. Crowley. The Psalms of David. London, I 549,"To The Christian Readar...This have I done, to move the to delyte in the readynge and hearynge of the Psalmes, wherin lyeth hyd the most preciouse treasure of the christian religion". STC 2725. Titlepage; For a discussion of Crowley see J.N. Kitg, Literature Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1982. 319-339. ilL. Greenfeld. Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge Ma. , and London: Harvard University Press. 1992. 18J .A. Muller. and the Tudor Reaction. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1926. x PREFACE TO THE READER

show any signs of wishing to correct Tyndale against Hebrew texts; instead, he rewrote Tyndale's text in a vulgar English that catches the ear. The Bibles and Testaments that I discuss display a wide range of presentation styles. Becke's 1549 Bible, with its prefatorial emphasis on gleaning quotations from the Scriptures, its employment of title-notes, marginal notes and end-notes, pictures and picture notes and rhymes, signifies that this is a Bible to be read. It is the kind of study Bible that anticipates the Geneva Bible of 1560. Taverner's 1539 Bible, subject to a 1538 injunction restricting annotation, has no woodblock illustrations, after the title-page, no prefatorial exhortations and, upon close examination of the reviser's procedure, is a Bible to be read out to listeners. All Bibles would have been intended for the ear, but not all translators and revisers took Taverner's pains to ensure that what could be heard could be understood. Whilst all Bibles would have been intended for the eye, not all printers took John Daye's pains to promote reformation through reading. Such revision/presentation procedures have implications for 'audience' and 'readership'. An annotated and illustrated Bible can only be fully appreciated by one reader at a time, but a Bible, such as Taverner's, that illustrates only with the words used in revising, can be appreciated by as many as can hear it at one reading. About some of the revisers discussed in this study we know quite a lot, there are a number of good biographies of Tyndale19 available now, and about others we know virtually nothing, Edmund Becke, for example. ,20 Anthony a Wood21 and John Bale22 are the standard references for neglected figures of history, but where a character does not have a substantial entry in these documents it is very difficult to piece a biography together. There is a biography of Joye23 and one of Rogers,24 but no biography has yet been written of Richard Taverner, surprisingly, given that he was a fairly important figure during Tudor . There is no adequate biography of Coverdale, Becke or Whittingham, though L. Lupton devoted a volume to him in his history of the Geneva Bible. 25 What brief biographies I have gleaned from these sources have

1'1[). Daniell. William Tyndale A Biography. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994; 1.F. Mozley. William Tyndale. New York: S.P.C.K. 1937; R. Demaus.William Tyndale A Biography. rev. R. Lovett. London: The Religious Tract Society. 1905. 20J. Foxe. The Acts and Monuments ofJohn Foxe.8 vols. 4th ed. rev. 1. Pratt. London: Oxford University Press. 1877. 2tA. a Wood. Athenae Oxoniensis. I. London. 1721. JRL. 6715. 22J. Bale. Scriptorum Illustrium Majoris Brytannie. Basle. 1557. JRL. R3746. 23 C.C. Butterworth and A.G. Chester. George Joye 1495?-1553: A Chapter in the History of the English Bible and the English Reformation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1962. See also J. F. Mozley. Coverdale and his Bibles. London: Lutterworth Press. 1953. 24J. L. Chester. John Rogers: The Compiler of the First Authorised English Bible. The Pioneer of the English Reformation: And its first Martyr. London. 1861. 25Lupton, L. The History ofthe Geneva Bible. 24 vols. London, 1966-1993. PREFACE TO THE READER xi

usually been endorsed by the contributors to the Dictionary of National Biography on CD ROM, and in many cases the snapshot biographies there are a sufficient guide for the purpose of this study.26 The extent of Cranmer's intervention in the making of English Bibles is still not known, even after D. MacCulloch's award-winning biography of him. 27 Fry decided that Cromwell was the instigator of the Great Bible, and that Cranmer intervened in Bible history only where his preface begins, in the later edition. 28 This may not be the case, however, and in Cranmer's annotations to Institutions we can already begin to see elements of the procedure that the Great Bible revisers followed. 29 Haigh's now familiar term 'English Reformations' has provided a view of history that takes account of the detail of the 'people' that were being reformed, contained, and who then at four significant points in sixteenth-century history, rebelled.30 But if, as Haigh warns us, we should be wary of attempts to make history seamless, we should also reassess the development of the establishment machinery that has been called 'Protestant' and consider the variety of Reformation Protestantisms emerging in the sixteenth-century. Henry VIII was proclaimed Head of the in 1534. Henry VIII was far from being the puppet King of Reformers, and G.W. Bernard even suggests that he was in fact the "principal architect of religious policy".3! The fact is that Henry VIII did not work alone on religious policy and trying to pretend that he did erases the important roles of and as antagonists of and aids to Henry VIII throughout Reformation. Cranmer's annotations to the Institutions reveal alarming clefts in the newly Reformed Church. Cranmer and Henry, two of the most powerful sculptors of this new establishment, show that they have different agendas for its development from the moment of its inception. Cranmer consistently disapproved of Henry's suggestions for the revision of the Institution where they obscured the meaning with rhetoric. Cranmer stressed the importance not only of plain English, but of good English. He demonstrated a keen sense of what would be acceptable and cause least offence, and what would be accessible to a common reader. He would not allow

26DNB on CD ROM. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 27D. MacCulloch. Thomas Cranmer: A Life New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996. 2&F. Fry. A Description of the Great Bible 1539 and theSix editions of Cranmer's Bible, 1540 and 1541. Bristol: Printed for the Editor, 1862. R4549. 29'Corrections of the Institution ofa Christian Man, by Henry VIII. With Archbishop Cranmer's Annotations.' Thomas Cranmer,Miscellaneous Writings and Letters. ed. J.E. Cox. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1846. 83-114. JOe. Haigh. English Reformations.' Religion. Politics, and Society under the Tudors Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. 3\ GW. Bemard. 'The Making of Religious Policy, 1533i546: Henry VIII and the Search for the Middle Way.' The Historical Joumal41. 2. (1998) : 321 ~49. xii PREF ACE TO THE READER

anything that suggested Catholicism, and he did not allow Christ's words to be appended, and he successfully restrained Henry from changing the by challenging Henry's suggestion that "Jesus Christ" should replace God in the first Commandment. He continually edited words that were superfluous to the simple meaning of the text, and fought to keep text that he knew maintained the context of the whole passage. What is interesting from the examination of the Institutions is that Henry did attempt to refashion England through self-authorised refashioning of biblical text. When Cranmer needed authority to support his argument, he quotesd primarily from the . He might have quoted from an English Bible, and the fact that he finds that he has to reach for the Vulgate for an authority suggests that the English Bible was experiencing some difficulty in being accepted as having come from a better authority than the Vulgate. 32 Dissolving the habitual usage of the Vulgate was another battle that Reformers had to win, whilst their own revisions were clear evidence that the Vulgate continued to play an active role in the development of English biblical text.33 Even Latimer, a prominent Protestant preacher, would quote from the Vulgate before giving an English translation to the listening crowd. The authoritative verbal annotation was, seemingly, a necessary authority for his English text. 34 Cranmer's objection to Henry'S rephrasing of the Lord's Prayer in the Institution is interesting, not only as a measure of the extent of Cranmer's influence with Henry, but in its revelation about Cranmer's own translating policy. To the words "Lead us not into temptation", Henry had responded that this should be changed to: "suffer us not to be led". Cranmer responded to Henry's change in the following way:

"Suffer us not to be led". Christ taught us thus to pray, "Lead us not into temptation". And we should not alter any word in the scripture, which wholly is ministered unto us by the Ghost of God, I Pet.i., although it shall appear to us in many places to signify much absurdity: but first, the scripture must be set out in God's own words, and if there be any ambiguity, absurdity, or scruple, after it would be declared, according to the true sense thereof35 l2E. Duffy's study of this period reminds us of the pervasiveness of the Catholic religion even at the height of Reformation. "The Kentish town ofCranbrook had produced Protestants from the 1530's onwards, but it was a bastion of traditional religion, whose images were not defaced and whose Rood was being rebuilt in the 1540's". E. Duffy. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 140()'1580. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992.479. l3The Vulgate is Taverner's first non-English reference work: in spite of Taverner's reputation as a Greek scholar, it is the Vulgate that he turns to for suggestions in his revision. 34 "But Christ's meaning was, that he was come for another purpose; he had another office deputed unto him than to be a judge in temporal matters.Ego veni vocare peccatores ad poenitentiam; "I am come", saith he, "to call sinners to repentance:" H. Latimer. Sermons. ed. G. E. Corie. I. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1844.273. J5ibid. 106. PREF ACE TO THE READER xiii

Cranmer suggested that translated scriptural text should not be revised. Whilst such a procedure argued for the authority of the English Bible through the fixing of the English text, it clearly had implications for any Bibles with which Cranmer was involved and which were printed without those explanatory margins. MacCulloch has drawn our attention recently to the fact that Cranmer and Cromwell were both in contact with Grafton and Whitchurch concerning the preparation of an English Bible.36 Cranmer may have had a hand in the 1539 Bible for which Cromwell alone is usually given credit. When we consider that the 1539 Bible had to be printed without all of those planned notes, we can only conclude that they would have elucidated the parts of the Scripture that had been left "absurd". With this in mind, that Bible can not therefore be said to be as complete a revision of the Matthew Bible as that of Richard Taverner, who in 1539 demonstrated a more dynamic revision procedure to compensate for the lack of notes. The following study is an investigation into the revision procedure of seven revisers of English biblical text. I do not attempt to find precedents for all of the changes made in the text: much of that scholarship was done in the nineteenth century and offers only a limited way of appreciating the work of the revisers. This study brings some neglected biblical texts into the foreground of biblical literary studies, and offers alternative ways of appreciating sixteenth• century text. I will begin by introducing you to the revisers. Whilst biography is not a chief concern of this inquiry, there can be no doubt that Bible revising in the sixteenth century was a dangerous occupation. Whilst Tyndale was forced to flee England in order to translate the Scriptures into English, Rogers and Coverdale and Taverner were fortunate enough to enjoy a short period of protection under Cromwell's patronage in the , and Becke benefited from the powerful Protector Sommerset's guidance of Edward Vi's rule in the 1540's. In 1553, the accession of Catholic Queen Mary forced many Protestant scholars to flee England. Many of those who stayed behind faced persecution. and John Rogers were amongst the first martyrs of this reign. Between 1558 and 1560, William Whittingham and his fellow scholars who had been busy with the revision of the English Bible in Geneva, began to return to England, now ruled by Protestant Queen Elizabeth. When Whittingham returned, he carried a text that was to have a lasting impact on English Literature and Culture.

36 "It is apparent from a letter of Grafton's to Cromwell in August that he was keeping in touch with both Cromwell and Cranmer separately, yet it is not clear that Cranmer realized this". D. MacCulloch. Thomas Cranmer: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. 198. XIV PREFACE TO THE READER

WILLIAM TYNDALE (1494-1536)

William Tyndale was born in Gloucestershire, probably in 1494 in Gloucestershire. In 1512 he took a B.A. and in 1515 an M.A. at Oxford. Having failed to secure a position which would enable him to translate the New Testament, Tyndale went to Hamburg in 1524 and then to Cologne a year later. All that remains of the 1525 translation is the first 22 chapters of Matthew, but the 1526 New Testament has survived. Daniell, Tyndale's biographer, estimates that the New Testament would have been in England by March 1526 and by October that year the Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, was already burning them at St. Paul's Cross. Tyndale's Pentateuch was printed in January 1530 and it reached England later that year. In the safe haven of the English Merchants house, Tyndale continued his work, before finally being caught, imprisoned at Vilvoorde before being strangled and burned on 6th October, 1536. He left behind him the foundations of all future translation in the English language.

GEORGE JOYE (1495-1553)

George Joye was born in Renhold, Bedfordshire, in 1495, or thereabouts. In 1515 he was ordained priest at Renhold. According to Bale he was skilled in both Latin and Greek. He obtained his B.A. from Christ's College Cambridge in either 1513 or 1514 and was admitted to the M.A. there in 1517. In that same year he became a fellow of Peter College. In 1525 Joye became a Bachelor of Divinity. Butterworth's conjecture is that Joye went first to Calais in December 1527 and subsequently to or Strasburg. "We do not know which city he chose for his first refuge".37 Daniell thinks that Joye probably fled to Antwerp. In any case, Joye remained exiled for his Lutheran sympathies till 1535.38 He fled again in 1540 and was out of the country for a further eight years. Twenty-six pieces of work are attributed to Joye, in the form of biblical translations, revisions of Tyndale and translations of prominent German exegetes. The fact that a number of these works were reprinted during Joye's lifetime is a testament to his popularity with English readers, if not all English scholars.

J7c. C. Butterworth and A. G. Chester. George Joye 1495?-1553: A Chapter in the History of the English Bible and the English Reformation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962. 47. The irony is that Joye has failed to get a chapter in any of the standard histories of the English Bible, a point that Butterworth and Chester raise in their general survey of Joye and his work. 38 D. Daniell. William Tyndale: A Biography. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994. PREFACE TO THE READER xv

Joye's reputation has suffered because of the famous W T Yet Once More to the Christian Reader. But whilst Tyndale had a right to defend his own reputation, subsequent scholars have merely used Tyndale as an excuse to avoid a serious study of Joye's New Testament. The most recent Joye epitaph comes from Tyndale's biographer, Daniell, who has little sympathy for Joye:

He died in England in 1553, having managed to quarrel with just about everyone he had ever met.39

JOHN ROGERS (1s00? - 1555)

John Rogers was born around 1500 in Deritend, near Birmingham. He gained his B.A. from Pembroke Hall, Cambridge in 1526 and resided in the rectory of the Holy Trinity in London between 1532-1534. He proceeded to Antwerp as Chaplain to the English Merchants, where he met Tyndale. Rogers married Adriana de Weyden in 153617 and went to Wittenberg. Most of 1536 would have been taken up with the business of preparing Tyndale's biblical translations for the press at Antwerp. We have no information concerning Rogers's activities for the interim period but Rogers returned to London in 1548 and stayed with Whitchurch. On 24 August 1551, Rogers was appointed to the prebend of St. Pancras in S1. Paul's Cathedral by Ridley, Bishop of London. His last preaching is recorded on 6 August 1553, at S1. Paul's Cross. On 27 January 1554, Rogers was imprisoned at Newgate on Bonner's orders. Gardiner, having heard Rogers's appeal, sentenced him to death. On the 4 February 1555, Rogers was defrocked and burnt alive at Smithfield. 40

RICHARD TAVERNER (1505-1575)

Born in Brinsley in in 1505, Richard Taverner's early university education was gained at Cambridge. In 1527 Wolsey recruited Taverner for his new Cardinal College, Oxford. Taverner returned to Cambridge and completed

3'1). Daniell. William Tyndale.- A Biography. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994. 322. The fact that Joye did annoy so many people has resulted in the survival of a number of interesting tracts between Joye and Tyndale, Gardiner and More. Joye fights with Tyndale about Resurrection; with More about Transubstantiation; and with Gardiner about Predestination. The fact that Joye obtained responses from these men indicates that Joye himself was no minor figure in the development of a reformation consciousness. 4ODictionary ojNational Biography on CD ROM Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. xvi PREFACE TO THE READER

his M.A. in 1530. He studied Philosophy, Greek and Divinity, and then proceeded to study Law in London before returning to Cambridge to teach Greek. In 1532 he was in Europe and, in a state of distress, he wrote to Cromwell. Yost sees no reason to doubt Wood's account of Taverner as "a zealous promoter of Reformation and the Protestant Religion".41 Taverner's first work for Cromwell was in 1532, a translation of 's Encomium Matrimonii. Amongst the commissioned works of the 1530's were translations of Melanchthon, Sarcerius and Capito. Cromwell commissioned the Augsberg Confession and the Apology of Melanchthon in 1536. The same year he appointed Taverner Clerk of the Privy Seal. Taverner translated Sarcerius's Locus Communes in 1538. Taverner's translation of Capito's Epitome of the Psalms was completed in 1539. Cromwell put Taverner in charge of Bankes's press from 1538-40. Taverner's final piece before Cromwell's fall was The Epistles and Gospels with a brief Postyl upon the same, in 1540. This enjoyed five editions and reprints in 1542 and 1545. His commissioned postills (1540) were later printed in the Elizabethan book of Homilies.42 Yost notes that "a number of scholars wrote sermons on particular passages of Scripture and submitted them to Taverner for editing".43 Taverner was MP for Liverpool in 1545. During Mary's reign Taverner was sent to the Tower, then released. made him her High Sheriff of Oxford and in 1552 he was given a license to preach at St. Mary's Oxford. He died in Woodeaton on July 14th 1575.44

MYLES COVERDALE (1488-1568)

Myles Coverdale was born in North Riding in 1488, and educated at Austin Friars, Cambridge, where Dr Baines was in charge. Between 1528-34 it is thought that he worked in Antwerp and Hamburg.45 In 1535 Coverdale's first

41J. K. Yost. 'Gennan Protestant Humanism and the Early English Refonnation: Richard liverner and Official Translation.'Bibliotheque D'Humanisme et Renaissancexxxii (1970) : 615. 42Infonnation concerning Richard Taverner can be found in Wood, and Bale. TheDictionary of National Biography contains a useful precis of Taverner's career, but Yost has gleaned what can be gathered about the man. 43J. K. Yost. 'Gennan Protestant Humanism and the Early English Refonnation : Richard Taverner and Official Translation. 'Bibliotheque D 'Humanisme et Renaissancexxxii (1970) : 61S. 44A. a Wood, Athenae Oxoniensis. I London, 1721. JRL,67IS. 182gS; and Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium Majoris Brytannie. Basle, 1557. JRL, R3746, f.698.v. 45Publications as recent as J. Pellican's, The Bible of the Reformation. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996. follow Mozley's assertion that Coverdale helped Tyndale with the translation PREFACE TO THE READER xvii

complete English Bible was printed, probably in Antwerp, though it was not licensed till 1537.46 Coverdale undertook several revisions of the Matthew Bible to enable it to be set up in churches as the official English Bible. In 1547 Coverdale returned to England and was appointed chaplain to the Queen Dowager. In 1548 he went with Lord Russell to suppress the Devonshire rebels. In 1551 he was consecrated ; in 1553 Mary took his bishopric away. The King of organised Coverdale's departure from England and Coverdale was appointed parochial charge of Bergzabern in the duchy of Deuxpoints. He moved to Geneva and stayed there till 1558. He was therefore in Geneva at the time when the Geneva Bible was being prepared. In December 1559 Coverdale officiated at the consecration of Parker. Though he was offered the see of Llandaf in 1563, he refused it. Robertson notes that between 1567 and January 1568 Coverdale preached at the Holy Trinity in the Minories till his death in 1568.47

EDMUND BECKE (t11550)

We know very little about Edmund Becke. He was ordained Deacon by Bishop Ridley in 1551. He was responsible for two editions of the Matthew Bible: one was of the 1537 Matthew Bible, printed in 1549, and the second was an edition, 1551, which he put together from his revised Taverner Bible Old Testament, which had already been printed in parts throughout 1549 and 1550, and Tyndale's Matthew Bible New Testament. This is an odd juxtaposition given that Tyndale was the Hebraist and Taverner the Greek scholar. The 1548 New Testament contained seven references to 's Image of Both Churches and instructions to readers to seek out that work, and a series of woodcuts with accompanying rhyming couplets, which John King has argued turned them into emblems.48 These woodcuts were transported into the 1549 Becke Bible's New Testament. Becke also translated "Two dialogues wrytten in Latin by the famous clerke D. Erasmus of Roterdame, one called Polyphemous or the Gospeller, the other dysposing of thynges and names; translated into English by Edmund

of the Pentateuch, even though Anderson, writing in his The Annals of the English BiblLondon: Jackson, Walford and Hodder, 1862. demonstrated in 1845 that this was impossible. 46 See Guido Latre. 'The 1535 and its Antwerp Origins.' Orlaith O'Sullivan. ed.The Bible as Book: The Reformation. London: British Library, 2000.89102. See also Harold R. Willoughby, The Coverdale Psalter and the Quatrocentenary of the Printed English Bible. Chicago: The Caxton Club. 1935. 47Dictionary ofNational Biography on CD ROM Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 48 J. N. King. English Reformation Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. 129. xviii PREFACE TO THE READER

Becke'. He also wrote "A brefe confutacion of this most detestable and Anabaptistrial opinion that Christ dyd not take hys flesh of the blessed vyrgyn Mary nor any corporal susbstance of her body. For the maintenaunce wherof Jhone Bucher, otherwise called Jhon of Kent, most obstinately suffered and was burned in Smythfyelde, the ii. Day of May Anno Domini M.D.L'. This is all that has been printed and which remains of what Becke wrote. 49

WILLIAM WHITTINGHAM (1520-1579)

Anthony a Wood gives an account of William Whittingham in his Athenae Oxoniensis, but for a fuller account of Whittingham we must turn to a nineteenth• century article by M. Green: 'The Life and Death of Mr William Whittingham Dean of Durham, who departed this life Anno Domini 1579, June 10.' Green estimates Whittingham to have been born in 1520, rather than the 1524? date given in the Dictionary of National Biography, owing to a report that he went to Brasenose College, Oxford at the age of 16 in 1536. From here he went to All Souls ColIege and Wolsey's Cardinal College. Green notes that Whittingham's license to travel was issued in 1550, and he went to Lyons, where he fell ill. He went to Orleans, where he married Catherine, Calvin's sister-in-law, before moving on to Germany and Geneva. Whittingham appears to have returned to England at the wrong moment, and in 1553 he fled abroad once more. Green reports: "And Mr Whittingham remained in till he heard of the coming of sundry English bishops". In a footnote, Green names a number of Bishops who were deprived of their sees by Mary and who established a church at Frankfurt: Barlow, Scory, Coverdale, Harley, Tailour, Hooper, Bird, Bushe and Poynet. In 1555 Whittingham fled from the in-fighting in Frankfurt and went to Geneva, which Whittingham refers to in his New Testament preface as: "the citie of Geneva, that justely it may be calIed the patron and mirrour of true religion and godlynes". Whittingham's close companion throughout seems to have been Goodman. He is named as one of those responsible for the Geneva Bible, amongst Whittingham himself, Coverdale, Gilbee, Sampson and Cole. Green gives no treatment of the New Testament beyond a meagre reference to Westcott's comments on the same in a footnote. Whittingham was made Dean of Durham in 1563, upon the Earl of Leicester's advice, where he served until his death in 1579.50

49 Dictionary ofNational Biography on CD ROM. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 50ibid.; M. Green. 'The Life and Death ofMr William Whittingham Dean of Durham. who departed this life Anno Domini J 579, June 10.' London: Camden Miscellany, 1871. 148. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I gratefully acknowledge the British Academy Arts and Humanities Research Board Award for the 3-year Ph.D on which this book is based. Thanks are also due to The Tyndale Society, The Institute for Renaissance and Reformation Bible Studies, The National Science Council of Taiwan, The University of Notre Dame, The Scriptorium Centre for Christian Antiquities, Point Lorna Nazarene University and K.U.Leuven for their generosity. I am also thankful for the assistance of the archivists and librarians at the British Library, the Newberry Library, the , Oxfordshire County Archives and the John Rylands Manchester University Library, especially to Alistair, Anne, Jean and Stella, for their efficiency, patience and understanding throughout my undergraduate and graduate researches. I would like to thank all of my colleagues working in the area of Reformation Text around the world, whose work I have enjoyed and been inspired by, especially Professor Gerald Hammond, who supervised the Ph.D., Professor David Norton, Professor David Daniell, and Professor J.N. King. I would most like to thank my husband Nigel Westbrook, for his encouragement, faith and support through many years of research. INTRODUCTION

It would be almost impossible to overestimate the impact of the printed English Bible on sixteenth-century culture. It entered every aspect of sixteenth-century life. It changed the way that people practiced their religion, and received the Scriptures. It contributed to higher levels of literacy, and promoted self• education. Though Richard Gawthrop and Gerald Strauss have argued that private reading during the Refonnation was not widespread in most of Europe, it appears that in England there existed a population of avid readers.l It played a major role in a developing national consciousness. It penneated every kind of text, the drama, the poetry, proclamations, prefatory epistles, parliamentary proceedings and legislation. A tiny verse of Leviticus found its way to the heart of Tudor Politics and, enabling the divorce of Katheryn of Aragon, and the marriage of Anne Boleyn, ushered in a new Church of England. The English Bible was an important tool with which Thomas Cromwell displaced the authority of the Pope in England. The very issue of having a Bible translated into the English language created a wealth of tracts both opposing and defending translation. These ranged from short prefatory epistles to the biblical texts themselves to voluminous arguments between men of state, the Dialogues between and William Tyndale of 1528-30 are the most famous. But in 1583 William Fulke's 'A Defence of the Sincere and True Translations of the Holy Scriptures into the English Tongue Against the Cavils of Gregory Martin.' epitomised a debate about the relationship between biblical translation and authority that continued through the sixteenth and into the seventeenth century. Aside from these official defences there were many annotations in the English Bibles that defended their own authority, and this was as true of the earliest English printed Bibles, such as the Matthew Bibles, as it was of the later

1 See Richard Gawthrop and Gerald Strauss. 'Protestmtism and Literacy in Early Modem Germany.' Past and Present 104 (1984) : 31-SS and H.S. Bennett. English Books and their Readers. /475-/557. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. xxii INTRODUCTION

Geneva Bibles and then the Catholic English Rheims-Douay. The importance of translation to the development of English language and literature more generally in the sixteenth century is, of course, great and in the literary works of the period, often the classical and biblical are combined in such a way that it has sometimes been difficult for scholars to discern the true sources of writers such as Wyatt, Spenser, Shakespeare and Jonson.2 The translation of the Bible into the English language had more immediate consequences for those engaged in the translation. William Tyndale, John Rogers, and Thomas Cranmer were all martyred, burned at the stake for their involvement in the establishment of the English Bible. The spectacle of these public executions of disobedient men and women was an important part of establishing discipline in the realm, and these events produced a literature of their own. Execution speeches were popular with the crowds of onlookers, and John Foxe documented many of these in his Acts and Monuments of 1563, more popularly known as Foxe's Book ofMartyrs. This was to become one of the most widely read books in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We can not overlook the impact of the Bible on Print culture of the sixteenth-century. The success ofthe English Bible was dependent upon effective printing and distribution during very politically turbulent times, but the demand for biblical text grew beyond anyone's expectations, resulting in both an increase in the number of print shops in London, and a wider variety of literature to appeal to an increasingly literate population. An important point to bear in mind when we consider the English Bible's impact on culture, is that we are not talking simply about one Bible. There were revisions and new translations being made throughout the sixteenth century, by translators with different ideas about the meaning of Scripture and about the ways in which it ought to be read. There are many textual differences between the Bibles themselves, even when one claims only to be a correction, as in the case of Taverner's 1539 version of Tyndale's Joshua to 2 Chronicles. Translators and revisers working toward a common goal did not necessarily agree about translation principles. Strong disagreements between translators and revisers are registered in letters and prefaces to Bibles, as in the case of William Tyndale and George Joye, who revised Tyndale's 1526 New testament without putting his name to it.

2In Naseeb Shaheen. Biblical References in Shakespeare's Tragedies.Newark: London and Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1987. He explains "Often the verbal similarity between Shakespeare and Scripture is neglible, while the Spirit of Shakespeare's lines and the context in which they appear haunt us with tre suspicion that they were inspired by a similar passage in Scripture". 7. He cites Macbeth's "man that is born of woman" would seem to be a borrowing from Job 14.1, in fact, the words occur in Holinshead from his source Boetheus's Scotorum Historiae, so we can not always assume that Shakespeare's quotes are from particular Bibles. INTRODUCTION xxiii

Biblical texts had different purposes, some were large lectern Bibles to be read out at Church, others were small octavos that could be slipped into a pocket and carried easily for private reading, some were very scholarly, inviting the reader to choose between what the text had given and the words from which they were translated in the margins. Some were copiously furnished with cross-references that told the reader to look up a text that was related to the one that he or she was reading. Some Bibles had woodcuts that also sugested particular ways of understanding the text. In his 1549 Bible, John Daye made enormous polemical capitol out of his woodcuts to Revelation, adding protestant mnemonic couplets to gruesome depictions of the apocalyptic events. Throughout the sixteenth-century portions of Scripture were published separately either for the poorer citizens, or to be enjoyed in isolation from the other texts, this is particularly the case with New Testaments and Psalms. The psalms themselves were adapted, paraphrased, set to music, or printed with illustrative woodcuts. The penitential psalms of David were sometimes printed on their own. Given the huge expenditure and effort involved in making translations of Bibles, we might want to consider why some were endorsed by the authorities and others were not. We may also want to consider the ways in which biblical literature was absorbed into the secular text of the day. All of these things should be considered when we attempt to discusss the impact of the Bible in sixteenth• century English Culture. I will begin, however, by introducing you to the English Bible.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BIBLE

A history of the English Bible may begin with the circulation of Bible stories transmitted orally, finding their way into pageants, poetry, wall paintings, songs, and entering the popular imagination through grass roots culture. In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People,3 St Bede relates an account of Caedmon, a seventh-century labourer who transformed Bible stories into song which were memorised by people who heard them. Bede, a great scholar of the early 8th century was endeavouring an English version of John's Gospel just before his death. The need to have a permanent record of the Scriptures in a language that not only scholars could understand but one that less able clergy and ultimately the common people could understand, absorb and most importantly

lBede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Tr. Leo Sherley-Price and D.H. Fanner. Hannondsworth : Penguin Books. 1990. iv.24. xxiv INTRODUCTION

remember, is an endeavour that developes with the increasing need for a national identity, and with the expansion ofleaming. John Wycliffe (circa 1330-1384) was an eminent theologian and the inspiration for the first Bibles in Englsh, translated from the Vulgate, Jerome's fourth-century latin translation of the Hebrew. Wycliffe propounded a theory of 'dominion by grace'. 'Dominion by grace' meant that each man was directly responsible to God, responsible for following God's laws in holy Scriptures, and not those the Church had prescribed. In order to put this theory into practice it was necessary for people to have a Bible in English. Unfortunately the printing press was about 75 years from being invented and so the Wycliffe Bibles had to be copied out by hand, and read out loud. Two versions were produced, the first around 1382, which is a virtually meaningless word for word translation of the Vulgate, the second was produced around 1388 sometime after Wycliffe's death by John Purvey. This Bible was quite different in that it replaced the unintelligible latin English with a readable English style. So even at this early stage two ideas about how the Bible should be translated into English were emerging, one that attempted to transfer the text from one language to another by following the word order exactly, and another that attempted to transfer the meaning across languages, even if this meant departing from the exact word order. In 1382 a preacher at St Mary's Oxford denounced Wycliffe's followers as Lollards, heretics, troublesome to authority. Wycliffe's teaching was banned. In 1408 the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Arundel, pronounced that no one was to translate or even read the vernacular Bible without the Bishop'S approval. Prior to the printing press people would have received their Scriptures orally, from preachers and priests, this practice did of course continue and was a major part of the Protestant regime for the education of the people, but as Defoe was later to remark : "preaching of sermons is speaking to a few of mankind; printing of books is talking to the whole world". Unfortunately, Archbishop Arundel's ban on Bible reading was not to be the last in the history of the English Bible. William Caxton's Printing press of 1476 revolutionised the possibility for lay education through increased circulation of printed ideas and information. But because of the 1408 ban imposed by Bishop Arundel, it was not until 1535 that England had a complete printed Bible in the English language, and this was the work of Miles Coverdale (1488-1568). His version was translated not from the original languages but largely from the Vulgate, with the help of several European Latin and German versions. Whilst this version is generally fraught with clumsy English phrasing it does contain an English translation of the Psalms that was the basis of the of 1549 and which remained in the hearts and minds of English people for four subsequent centuries. It was not until 1537 that the English people had a Bible in English translated largely from the original Hebrew and Greek languages, the original INTRODUCTION xxv

languages of the scriptures. This Bible is commonly known by the pseudonym 'The Matthew Bible' and under this name it was the first Bible to be licensed in England, that is, with the official seal of approval of Henry VIII. It contained William Tyndale's New Testament that had been translated and printed separately in 1526 then revised in 1534 and 1535, and the first five books of the Old Testament known as the Pentateuch, which Tyndale had printed in 1530, all revised by John Rogers. The Matthew Bible contained Tyndale's hitherto unpublished historical books of Joshua to 2 Chronicles. Those books which Tyndale had not translated were supplied from Miles Coverdale's 1535 Bible. Another notable feature of this Bible is that it contained the first complete set of notes in a printed English Bible that look forward to those of the famous Geneva version. These were gleaned from many European Bibles and commentaries by the Bible's editor John Rogers, whose martyredom in 1555 is spectacularly documented by John Foxe in his Acts and Monuments, or, Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Unfortunatey Tyndale never had the satisfaction of seeing, his biblical translations licensed, since he was publicly burned for translating the Bible in 1536 at Villvoord. Foxe included a picture of Tyndale at the stake uttering his dying words "Lord open the King of England's Eyes". This Matthew's Bible formed the basis offurther versions of the English Bible in the sixteenth century. The 1539 Great Bible was a revision by Coverdale of the Matthew Bible, and Thomas Cromwell chose this Bible to be read in Churches throughout England. There were seven editions printed between 1539-1541 and it is the second edition of 1540 that carries the famous Preface by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, martyred for heresy in 1556. When Queen Mary came to the throne in 1553 many Protestant reformers fled to the Continent to escape persecution. In Geneva there were a number of biblical scholars in exile. William Whittingham, Calvin's brother in law, led a party of scholars, based at Geneva in translating the Bible that was to become not just the Bible for the English people but the Bible of the English people for a century. It is the Geneva Bible that Shakespeare and his contemporaries would have known best. The Geneva was a Bible both for scholars and for lay people. It enabled the lay person to become the scholar. It had maps, woodcuts, marginal notes broken up into relatively small chunks keyed into the text with letters, and for the first time in an English Bible it split the paragraphs of text into numbered verses. most importantly it contained the prophetic and poetic books of the Old Testament that had not previously been translated from the original languages. In this it superseded the scholarship of all the other versions of the English Bible. 140 editions were produced of this Bible alone between 1560 and 1644. The Bishops Bible of 1568 was a response by Queen Elizabeth's Bishops to the marginal notes of the Geneva. Under the guidance of archbishop Mathew Parker a committee attempted to produce a Bible that was moderate, in xxvi INTRODUCTION

that it would omit offensive notes, but would rival the Geneva in popularity. It failed. In 1582 The Catholic exiles Gregory Martin and William Allen waged a counter-offensive by producing the Rheims New Testament. They ran out of money but the Douay Old Testament eventually appeared in 1609-10. These texts were translated from the vulgate. Its format imitates that of the Geneva with catholic doctrine launched from the catholic margins, prefaces and chapter essays. It wasn't until the 17th century, therefore, that the Protestant Bibles in English carrying their doctrine and propaganda in the margins, end notes and prefaces, had a Catholic rival. In 1604 King James I called a meeting at Hampton Court at which the prospect of revising the English Bible was discussed with some of the most eminent scholars of the day. The text was to be based on the Bishops Bible, but the revisers naturally used the best translations available, and this included the Geneva Bible. The Bible was to have no seditious notes, but marginal references only to indicate Hebrew and Greek words. In 1611 the Bible was published and this became known as the Authorised King James version, although it never was actually authorised. When 's soldiers carried their Bibles into battle it was the Geneva that they had tucked in their boots. In Scotland the Geneva Bible was the first licensed version, and it continued to dominate in Scotland when England had finally adopted the Authorised King James version. Nevertheless, when the A.V. appeared in 1611, it was considered to be the most scholarly translation to date, but much of its literary beauty was owing to the fact that it employed a large amount of the work of that unsung hero of the English language William Tyndale. The A.V. was extensively punctuated to guide the public readers of the Bible in Church, and it retained the verse numbering of the Geneva Bible. The A.V. is still regarded by many as the epitome of a good translation. But I have already overstepped my Chronological boundary and so I must go back now and discover what the having the Bible in the English language actually meant to people living in the sixteenth century.

THE REFORMATION OF THE CHURCH

The translation of the Bible into English took scriptural authority away from Rome. It represented national independance and it promoted the little known English language at a time when international scholarly debate demanded that latin be used. It was a major element in the English reformation of the Church and reformation of the people, but it was difficult to get approval for it from the English monarch Henry VIII. Most of the translation work was done secretly, INTRODUCTION xxvii

illegally and abroad, much of it printed in Antwerp. Apart from the 1408 ban on translation and reading of the Scriptures, more recent European events made Henry hesitant about creating the opportunities for the kinds of uprisings whitnessed in Germany. In January 1521 Luther had been excommunicated for burning Pope Leo X's response to his theses. On the 18th of April he invoked the anger of Emperor Charles V by refusing to retract his statements. Meanwhile in England Wolsey launched an attack on Lutheran heresy to please the Pope. He organized public burnings of Luther's books at St. Paul's Cross and persuaded Henry VIII to write his own attack on Luther, the Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, which was printed in July 1521. The Pope was very pleased with Henry and made him a Defender of the Faith. In this atmosphere Tyndale had approached the Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, about the possibility of getting funding to enable him to translate the New Testament into English. His timing was bad and Tunstall refused, but a London merchant called Monmouth, who secretly traded in Lutheran books, came to Tyndale's aid and funded the translation. Tyndale went to Wittenberg in 1524 and his New Testament, translated from Erasmus's Greek Testaments and Luther's 1522 Testament, was printed at Worms in March 1526, then smuggled into England. By 1529 Henry VIII was already thinking about divorcing Queen Katheryn and marrying Anne Boleyn, and this altered his relationship with the Pope, and his attitude to the Bible, though he never endorsed Luther or anyone else who did. 4 A copy of Tyndale's Testament came into Thomas More's hands, and the aggressive dialogue began between More and Tyndale. More advocated Church reform within the Church, but Tyndale, following Luther, insisted on a reformation that would base its authority on Scripture, on good translations that every man and woman could read in their own language. Tyndale wanted the Scriptures out of the hands of the clergy and into the hands of the people. It was the only way, he thought of breaking down the abuses that had arisen in the Church, and stamping out what he thought was superstitious nonsense. In 1530 Tyndale translated the Pentateuch, the first five books of Moses, from the Hebrew, again using Luther's translations to assist him. His preface to the reader reveals the way in which his translation was received and the arguments with which his vernacular translations were rejected by the authorities:

Saye, some of them that it is unpossible to translate the Scripture in to English. Some that it is not Lawfull for the laye people to have it in thier mother tonge, Some, that it wold make them all heretykes, as it wold no doute from many thinges which they oflonge tyme have falsly taught, and that is the whole cause wherfore they forbyd it, though they other

4Luther had challenged the Papal claim to be the sole authority of the scriptures. He questioned many rights of the priests and rejected transubstantiation. xxviii INTRODUCTION

clokes pretende. And some or rather every one, saye that it wold make them ryse ageynst the kinge, whom they them selves (unto their damnacyon) never yet obeyed.

Tyndale complained that the Church was deliberately keeping people ignorant of the Scriptures to prevent them from finding out that they were being misled. Thomas More and Stephen Gardiner, worried that private reading of the scriptures would create misunderstandings and rebellion and that it was much better to educate the clergy to appraise the people of their duties as Christians, than to trust the people with their own reformations. In spite of the time and energy spent on the debates over the printing of an English Bible, in the 25 years following the first printed New Testaments there was very little evidence that the Bible was being read by those who most needed to read it. Bishop Hooper's report of his visitation to his Gloucestershire diocese in 1551 was ample testimony to the continuing ignorance of the Clergy. Over half of those he examined could not even rehearse the Ten Commandments.6 To counteract what was perceived to be the risk of rebellion through misunderstandings arising from people reading the Bible, Tyndale and many subsequent revisers, had included explanatory annotations in the margins of the Bibles. These in turn were perceived by authorities to be seditious and in themselves promoting heretical doctrines. In 1538 a Tudor proclamation was given out which subjected marginal annotation to censorship, and the great Bibles of 1539-1541 were printed without marginal helps. Revisers, such as Joye and Taverner, adopted a policy of keeping marginal annotation to a minimum, but they altered the text of Scripture instead to make meaning clear, or even to add dramatic effect. For instance at Judges 8.1, you remember, Ephraim is angry with Gideon for not telling him that there was to be an attack on the Midianites. Tyndale translates "And they chode with him a-good", (chode, chide, to tell off) but Taverner revised the text to give dramatic emphasis to this rather dull telling• off "And they chode with him a-good and were welnygh at daggers drawing". This is very effective, and much more enjoyable to read, but it is not in the text of Scripture, and such revisions undermine the stability of the sacred text. These tended to be the translations that were swept aside by future Bible scholars in favour of Bibles that had closely adhered to Tyndale's scholarly texts. But to what extent could the average man and woman actually benefit from having the scriptures in the vernacular language, how many could read it for themselves, and how many of those who could read could also understand. Was the anxiety expressed by the authorities founded?

5 'W.T. To the Reader.' William Tyndale. 'The fyrst boke of Moses" Malborow: Luft, 1530. STC 2350. ai.v. 6 Julia Briggs. The Stage-Play World: Texts and Contexts 1580-1625. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 142. INTRODUCTION xxix

THE QUESTION OF LITERACY

The level of literacy among the population of England in the sixteenth century is still the subject of much speculation, but some clues can be gleaned from the period that may help us to answer this question. Bennet notes an increase in the number of printers in England from about six printers at the beginning of the sixteenth century, to about twenty by 1550. In 1500 the Short Title Catalogue lists only 52 editions of books of hours and primers, statutes, Latin grammas, and yearbooks. In 1550 246 editions of books are listed as having been printed, the almanacs and statutes are still there, but works by Becon, Bale,Calvin, Zwingli, Erasmus and English Bibles and portions of the Bibles dominate. This points to a substantial impact of Protestant literature and on the sixteenth• century book trade, and there could not have been such a thriving book trade without the demand of a literate population for those books. The success of the printing press also made it possible to produce large quantities of cheaper vernacular literature which would encourage people to acquire reading skills, people who could never have had access to manuscripts, let alone afforded their own copies were able to afford printed editions. Patrick Collinson has pointed out that up to the mid-seventeenth century, more Bibles were being printed in England than anywhere else. 7 The many editions of the Bibles, in whole or in specially produced parts for the poor, as in the case of Taverner's Bible which was issued in five parts from John Day's press in the late 1540's, testify to a reading public. In 1526 the English people had one New Testament printed in their language. By 1560 they had 30 whole Bibles, 2 Pentateuchs, 16 editions of prose Psalms, 9 editions of metrical Psalms, 5 miscellaneous Psalms by Gospellers like Crowley, or Court writers like Wyatt and one edition of Taverner's Epitome of the Psalms. There were 9 editions of Proverbs, separate editions of and by George Joye and by Tyndale. By 1560 there were 53 editions of the New Testament, 15 editions of liturgical Epistles and Gospels, 2 editions of Acts and expositions upon James and Jude printed separately. This increase in volume could not have happened without the participation of willing readers. The voracious appetite for reading had not been fully anticipated by the authorities, and by 1539 restrictions were already being imposed on the reading of the Bible. In the act of 1543 'For the Advancement of True Religion and for the Abolition of the Contrary', women, artificers, apprentices, journeymen, serving men of the rank of yeomen and under, husbandmen and labourers, were forbidden to read the Scriptures privately. Noblewomen and gentlewomen could read but only silently. Noblemen, gentlemen and merchants were to read it to

7 Patrick Collinson. 'England' in Bob Scribner, Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich. edsThe Reformation in National Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 86. xxx INTRODUCTION

their families. The 1543 act assumes widespread readership of the Bible across virtually the whole social strata. This reading is some indication of the success story of Thomas Cromwell's Protestant propaganda machinery, which convinced a large section of Southern England at least that reading the vernacular scriptures was necessary to their salvation. This message was endorsed by printed editions of the works of Protestant reformers on the continent. Richard Taverner, who had revised the Matthew Bible in 1539 produced translations of Erasmus, Melancthon and Capito under Cromwell's patronage. Those involved in Bible translation and revision were often writers of devotional works, translations, and polemical literature. Aside from his biblical translations William Tyndale also wrote several important works of religious and political relevance. His Obedience of a Christian man, written in 1528, was a text for rulers and their subjects which used scriptural precedent to communicate the necessity of obedience for salvation. It was widely read, King Henry VIII read it and declared that "this is a book for me and all kings to read". John Bale read it and incorporated it into his play King John. I will read a short excerpt from this play to give you some idea of the literature which the English Bible and biblical politics was influencing. At the end of act one of King John the interpreter enters and explains the meaning of act one and suggests an interpretation of act two:

Interpreter Thys noble kynge Johan as a faythfull Moyses Withstode proude Pharoah for hys poore israel, Myndynge to brynge it out of the lande of darkenesse. But the Eyptyanes ded agaynst hym so rebeJ\ That hys poore people ded styli in the desert dwell, Tyll that duke Josue whych was our late kynge Henrye Clerely brought us in to the lande of my Ike and honye.

As a stronge David at the voyce of very tie Great Gollie, the pope, he strake downe with hys slynge Restorynge agayne to a Christen Iybertie Hys lande and people, Iyke a most vyctoryouse kynge, To hir first bewtye intendynge the Churche to brynge From ceremonyes dead to the Iyvynge wurd of the Lorde, Thys the seconde acte wyll plenteously recorde~

Bale appropriates a medieval morality play strategy of naming characters by the moral virtues and vices that they represent, but he explains the meaning by appropriating biblical texts. He chooses biblical characters that he assumes his audience will recognise in order to make comparisons both with King John,

8W.A. Armstrong. ed. Elizabethan History Plays. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. 1107- 1120. INTRODUCTION xxxi

safely in the past, and with Henry VIII rather more dangerously in the present. Bale says that David is the defender of truth against the dreadful enemy of God's chosen people, Goliath, "great Golye the pope". He is clearly talking about sixteenth-century England, however, in which stage King Henry is King David, God's chosen King, who will restore the Church to its primitive glory by overcoming the pope and Roman religion in England. Bale is an important character in the sixteenth century religious, political and literary arena. His The Image ofBothe Churches written in two parts in 154511546 was the first English protestant commentary to be written to the book of Revelation. In Edmund Becke's 1549 revision of the Matthew Bible, which included Tyndale's New Testament, John Bale's Image was referred to and paraphrased on seven occasions in the annotations to the book of Revelation. This is the note to Revelation 17 that readers of Becke's 1549 Bible would have read as an authoritative interpretation of the whore of Babylon.

The whore is the Church of antichrist, which Bale declareth to be the Church of Rome. The many waters are the multitudes of people under the sayed Church, the kings (& rulers, wherof comitted spiritual fornication with her. loke in the xiii chapter for the description of this beast.9

We begin to get a sense of the level of intertextuality happening in this period. Tyndale translates the New Testament in 1526, writes the Obedience of a Christian Man in 1528 Bale then includes passages from Tyndale's Obedience in his play of King John, in 1536, and then Bale's own Image of Both Churches of 1545/46 finds its way into the annotation of the Matthew Bible revision by Becke and Daye in 1549. Biblical literature was being appropriated, absorbed, recycled and endorsed by reformers throughout the sixteenth century in every kind of text. In King John, the fact that Bale can assume his audience's knowledge of the Bible creates possibilities for dramatising the politics of his day without getting arrested. But in this period biblical precedents are often used to flatter and persuade Tudor Monarchs to align themselves with God's chosen leaders in the historical texts of the Bible. In The Parliamentary History of England Vol 3 1505-1559 the newly elected speaker of the Commons, Richard Rich is reported to have addressed Henry VIII in the following way:

9 "The Byble, that is to say all the holy Scripture" rev. Edmund Becke. London: Daye, 1549. STC 2077. xxxii INTRODUCTION

He then toke Occasion to praise the King for his wonderful Gifts of Grace and Nature; and compared him for Justice and Prudence toSolomon; for Strength and Fortitude to Sampson; and, for Beauty and Comeliness to Absalom. tO

These are three major figures in Joshua - 2 Kings, Although Hezekiah, Josia or David were more usually chosen for reformation purposes. Absolom was more usually depicted as the epitome of rebellion in the sixteenth-century, but I am sure that Richard Rich intended to flatter here. Udall's play Ezechias, written with Henry VIII in mind, around 1540, was conspicuously revived for Elizabeth's August 1564 visit to Cambridge. The point of this exercise was to remind Elizabeth of her duty to defend the true Church of England. Whilst Scriptural models for rulers were by no means innovations in the sixteenth century, John King and Margaret Aston have observed that this was a particularly rich period for analogising of English and Biblical Monarchs in both text and image formats. Biblical prefaces did of course make the most use of biblical precedent to win patronage, or royal acceptance for their translations. Becke's 1549 Bible preface, typical of deferential documents of the period, pays tribute the young King Edward 6th :

[A]s for and in the restorynge of religion, to the prystine manner and former usage of the prymitive Church, as apeareth by your godly proceedings, tendynge to fynish the frame that your graces father of famous memory, king henry the eighth (who with all honour I name )did princely begin, but prevented by death, left the furniture and finishing therof, to your grace, as David did to Solomon, by the providence of God."

He ends by wishing Edward well, and that God will "give give you honourable and triumphant victory over all your enemies Cyvyl and foren". This acknowledgement that god wins the battles for his chosen people is a recurring Old Testament idea, but text like this Bible preface goes someway to explain how England came to feel that it was God's chosen people in the mid-sixteenth• seventeenth century. The defeat ofthe Spanish Armada in 1588, the discovery of the Gunpowder plot in 1605 and England's subsequent military successes under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell all served to endorse England's sense of itself as God's chosen. Cromwell was to some extent instrumental in endorsing this specifically English Christian nationalism in the 1640' sand 1650' s. When asked whether he would lead the Paliamentary army in Ireland, on 23rd March 1648,

10 W. Cobbett. The Parliamentary History of England. London: T.C. Hansard for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1806-1820.3.133. II 'The Byble, that is to say all the holy Scripture" rev. Edmund Becke. London: Daye, 1549. STC 2077. INTRODUCTION xxxiii

Oliver Cromwell accepted in terms that turned an offensive into a Christian duty as the leader of God's English army against the Philistines:

I do confess, my Lord, I should desire that this business of Ireland I might not go upon it out of any personal respects whatsoever, and I would have personal respects far from this Army. I do not think that God hath blessed this Army for the sake of anyone man, nor has His presence been with it upon any such ground; but that presence and blessing that God hath afforded this Army, it hath been of his own good pleaSlre, and to serve his own tum. 12

Cromwell's political speeches are full of Scriptural reference, especially reference to the Psalms. In his 17th September speech at the opening of parliament, he recited the A.V. version of the 85th psalm and then exclaimed, "Truly I wish that this Psalm as it is, written in the book, might be better written in our hearts". 13 For more literary figures like Spenser and Shakespeare the Bible was often a source of numerous allusions rather than direct quotation. Edmund Spenser's poem The Faerie Queene, written and published between 1590 and 1596, was modelled on Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, but Spenser adapted the allegory to depict the religious and political struggles of an emerging English nation in the sixteenth-century. In book one The Redcross knight of Holiness who wears the apocalyptic bloodie cross of Christ, is thereby also wearing the red cross of st. George, and England. He is the defender of the true faith and guardian of Una, who represents the true Church. In Spenser's allegory, Duessa is the whore of babylon, the Church of Rome, and Archimago is the antichrist. The whore of babylon was a very powerful image in the sixteenth century and often used to represent the Roman Church in Reformation literature and woodcut illustrations. More specifically the whore was a symbol of spiritual idolatry which was perceived to be the root of all evil. The 1560 Geneva Bible annotation to Revelation 2. 13 warns that "they that consent to idolatry and false doctrine, comit spiritual whoredom, wherof followeth corporal whoredom, hos 4.13" The drama of the period is suffused with biblical and political allusions. In 1599 George Peele wrote his play David and Fair Bethsebe, drawn from the biblical text of 2 Samuel 11-19. Peele used the biblical text to explore ideas of obedience. In the biblical narrative, King David sees Bathsheba bathing, falls in love with her and sends for her. She becomes his lover and then returns home.

12 '23 March 1648/9 - Speech at the General Council at Whitehall, on being asked whether or not he would go to Ireland in command of the Parliamentary AIlllY.' Ivan Roots. Speeches afOliver Cromwell. London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1989.4. 13 , 17 September 1656 -Speech at the Opening of Parliament.' Ivan Roots.Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1989. I04S. xxxiv INTRODUCTION

But Bathsheba finds that she is pregnant, she tells David, the king, who then sends for her husband Uriah, a soldier at the wars. Uriah comes home but will not go to his wife while there is fighting still to do, so David sends him into the front line of battle, guaranteeing his death, then marries Bathsheba. Nathan the prophet reproaches King David for murder and adultery and David repents, hence we have the Penitential Psalm 51. In Act one scene one of Peele's play, King David sends his servant to fetch Bethsabe. This is Bethsabe's reply to the servant, Cusay,:

Bethsabe Ah, what is Bethsabe to please the king? Or what is David, that he should desire, For fickle beauty's sake, his servant's wife? Cusay David, thou knowest, fair dame, is wise and just, Elected to the heart ofIsrae!'s God; Then do not thou expostulate with him For any action that contents his soul. 14

The relationship between Kings and subjects is one of trust, but David is clearly abusing that trust. Peele's Bethsabe is very open and direct about the King's error, but she agrees to go with the servant "The king's poor handmaid will obey my lord". This is very interesting because not only does Peele exonerate Bethsabe from any blame in the matter, for she is merely an obedient subject to her King, but Peele virtually gives her the Virgin Mary's response to the angel Gabriel in Luke 1.38 "Behold the handmaid of the lord; be it done unto me according to thy word". Peele makes us think again about familiar texts of the Bible by juxtaposing the Old and New Testament narratives, and at the same time challenges us to question where our duty lies, is it to the King or is it to God? And this is a much debated political and theological argument in the sixteenth century. In a way it epitomises the inseparable relationship of politics and religion at this time. Peele's example is one way in which drama could absorb and alter biblical perspectives, but refonnation Bibles themselves were also engaged in challenging our perceptions. The Psalms in the sixteenth century were extremely popular, people sang to Coverdale's Ghoostly Psalmes, or Stemhold and Hopkins's metrical psalms. People read them and quoted them, as Cromwell later did to his Parliament and anny. Wyatt, Crowley and Surrey translated and paraphrased them, Taverner translated epitomies of them. How they were written often reveals a variety of functions that they fulfilled. In many cases editions of the psalms were prefaced with a woodblock print depicting the moment of David's catching sight of Bathsheba. These pictures prepared the reader to read the

14 George Peele, David and Bethsabe. George Peele. Plays and Poems. ed. Henry Morley. London: Routledge and Sons, 1887. 1.1. INTRODUCTION xxxv

Psalms in a particular way. For instance in the 1539 edition of the Great Bible, Bathsheba is depicted as a modest woman, avoiding the eye of the king. In the subsequent editions of the Great Bible, however, Bathsheba is stark naked and virtually at the King's window, whilst the poor king, who is very much like a representation of Henry VIII, seems about to have a heart attack. Now, these two pictures give off very different signals to the readers of the Psalms. The Bathsheba of 1539 could easily depict Peele's Bathsheba, reluctant but in the end obedient, which makes more sense of the penitential psalms in which David repents both the adultery and the murder that his lust for Bathsheba has caused. If we read the psalms with the second woodcut in mind our sympathy shifts to David! The woodcuts in biblical material of the period are very interesting in the way that they do direct the reading of those passages that they illustrate. But we do not really have time to discuss any more here, except to say that Foxe's book of martyrs did include rather gruesome depictions of the martyrdoms, which no doubt added both to the wide popularity of the editions of the Book of Martyres, and helped to inflame the popular imagination with the idea that to volunteer to die for one's religion was not damnable suicide, but heroic martyrdom.

EDUCATION

Because of the stress that Protestantism placed on private reading and self• education, the prefaces to Bibles also contained exhortations to readers. The 1539 Great Bible, so called because of its large size, should have had annotations in the margins to help readers to interpret the text. These were held up for censorship, and so the Bible was printed without them, but there was a promise that they would be printed in a later edition. In the absence of these notes Readers were warned: "do not rashly presume to make any private interpretation therof," The great Bible went through seven editions without notes. This promise of future annotations to the Great Bible suggests that Cromwell Cranmer and Coverdale, who were responsible for it, thought the absence of notes to be almost as dangerous to the political stability of the nation as polemical ones of the Matthew Bible. Hill cites Lever's assertion that popular revolts after 1549 were were not due to the translation of the Bible into English "but because the rude people, lacking the counsel of lerned men to teach them the true meaning when they read it or hear it, must needs follow their own imagination in taking of it" 15

15 See Christopher Hill. Society and Puritanism in pre-Revolutionary England. London: Seeker and Warburg, 1964. xxxvi INTRODUCTION

Reading required rules and laws if was not to become an unwieldy and dangerous weapon in the hands of the ignorant. Edmund Becke's 1549 revision of the 1537 Matthew Bible ends his notes to Revelation, and to the Bible, with a exhortation to the reader like that of the Great Bible ten years earlier:

Thus hast thou (gentle reader) such things as are dark and hid from the natural understanding, briefly touched, that thou mayst with less labour come to the knowledge and understanding of the whole. How be it the iludy to be brief would not suffer me to be so plain as I wish that i might be wherefore I think it necessary that thou play not the slugard following the example of the unprofitable drone be, who liveth only by honey that the dilligent bees gather, but contrary wise be thou a good bee, search for the sweet honey of the most wholesome flowers of God's holy word. And in all this give over thyself to the teachings of god's holy spirit who instructeth none but the humble spirited, and such as seek Reformation of ther own misliving, and all such he entrusteth to the full makying their hearts a mete temple for him to dwell in. Yet in the meantime, refuse not the gifts of god, which are offered unto the by the labours of other men whom God hath endued with the most excellent gift of enterpreting, but use them as meanes. And yet give not credence lightly unto every interpretation, but first prove the spirits. And if they confess not christ to be comen in the flesh (that is) that there is no maner of salvation beside him, believe them not, for they are the spirit of the antichrist. 16

The emphasis was on reading and gathering sentences from the scriptures, that could be applied to personal reformations. The annotations in the Bibles themselves suggested educative method that could be imitated. In the sixteenth century the filling of what were called commonplace books with appropriate classical and biblical quotations were fundamental to a child's education. The Proverbs and Adages of Erasmus, translated by Richard Taverner, ran into many editions and no doubt supplied many dramatists of the period with their fund of classical quips and biblical citations that lead us to think that they were always borrowing from each other. So insistent was this method of education that Milton actually denounced it as having taken the place of real study in his Reason of Church Government when he complained that he was having to argue with men who had got their learning solely from what he called marginal stuffings. Many commonplaces did indeed make up the marginal text of the Geneva Bibles.

16 "The Byble, that is to say all the holy Scripture" rev. Edmund Becke. London: Daye, 1549. STC 2077. INTRODUCTION xxxvii

PREACHING AND THE PLACE OF TEXT

Whilst preaching was an important part of the Protestant machinery for educating the people, the provision of an English biblical text that could be read privately was more effective. The very smallness of Tyndlae's New Testaments probably played a significant role in popularising his work. The dangers inherent in providing a text that an ordinary man or woman might misreed or misunderstand, were hardly mitigated by more preachers. We ought to consider that audiences were just as inclined to mishear or to misunderstand what was being said to them by the preacher as they were to misinterpret any printed biblical text. In his January 1548 Sermon on the plough delivered at St. Paul's Cross Latimer complained about his audience to his audience in the following way:

Ye may not be offended with my similitude, in that I compare preaching to the labour and work of ploughing, and the preacher to a ploughman: ye may not be offended with this my similitude; for I have been slandered of some persons for such things. It hath been said of me, "Oh, Latimer! Nay, as for him, I will never believe him while I Iive,nor never trust him; for he likened our blessed lady to a saffron bag" where indeed I never used that similitude .. .! might have said thus: as the safron bag that hath been fullof saffron, or hath had saffron in it, doth ever after savour and smell of the sweet saffron that it contained; so our blessed lady, which conceived and bare Christ in her womb, did ever after resemble the manners and virtues of that precious babe that she bare ... But as preachers must be wary and circumspect, that they give not any just occasion to be slandered and ill spoken of by the hearers, so must not the auditors be offended without cause. For heaven is in the gospel likened to a mustard seed17

That Latimer is not exaggerating this problem of mishearing might be further endorsed by the texts that we have of Shakespeare which were probably similarly heard through crowds and copied down partly from memory. The bad quarto of 1603, Shakespeare's text of Hamlet 3.1 being just one example. The bad quarto, which represents all that was remembered, or perhaps even heard of the spoken lines by someone wishing to capture its beauty in print, transformed the text to this:

To be, or not to be, I there's the point, To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all: No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes 18

I7Hugh Latimer. 'Sermon on the Plough.' G.E.Corrie. ed. Sermons by Hugh Latimer. Sometime Bishop of Worcester, Martyr, /555. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1844.60. 18 Quoted in Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. eds.The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. xxxiii. xxxviii INTRODUCTION

ENGLISH BIBLE AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICE

Aside from the problem of misinterpretation of readers of the text and the deaf and amnesia-stricken audiences, sixteenth-century reformers had another major obstacle to overcome, and that was the insistence of Superstition on the English imagination. Briggs notes that: The notion of lucky and unlucky or 'dismal' days, and the influence of the stars on the lives of individuals. White witches, popular healers, or cunning folk were widely consulted, and may even have provided an invisible, unofficial alternative to the clergy. This was certainly perceived to be the case by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who in his corrections to the Institutes of a Christian Man, complained that a passage had been marked for removal by King Henry himself, that seemed to him to be very appropriate to the reformation of the English people. The text that had been stricken through was as follows:

And se de they, that by sHjlefStitieHs F8jlHte seme days geed, seme dismal er inteftHnate; er think it a thing HnlHGky te meet in a llleFRing "'ith G8ftain kinds e£ beasts, eF "'ith FR@n efGllftain Jlrefessiens. Fer SHGh sHJl8fStitieHs telk infum8 the GreatHT8S efGed.

To this Cranmer commented:

Note: "They that by superstition repute." Whereas the same is stricken out, it seemeth more necessary to remain, forsomuch as the common people do in nothing more superstitiously. Likewise of astrology, and specially physiognomY·9

The drama of the time is a witness to the insistence of superstition of the kind that Cranmer complains of. In Shakespeare's King Lear, 1.2.10-114, Edmund disdains the common practice that he sees all around him. The Bible translators themselves attempted to tackle this problem with paratext, such as annotations, tables and prefaces to readers, but especially in their word-choice so that the biblical text would speak directly to its readers in the language of their ordinary worlds. At Leviticus 20.6, for instance, William Tyndale had translated:

Tyndale Yf any soul tume unto them that worke with spirites or makers of dysemall dayes and goo a whoorynge after them, I wilt put my face apon that soule and will destroye him from amonge his people.

19 Cranmer, T. Miscellaneous Writings alld Letters. ed. J.E. Cox. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846. 100. INTRODUCTION xxxix

In order to get a real sense of what Tyndale was doing here, we should perhaps compare a twentieth century rendering of this passage. It is as though the raw terror of God's threat, which Tyndale manages to convey, is screened behind glass in this REB version, leaving the reader to look on, unmoved:

REB I will set my face against anyone who wantonly resorts to ghosts and spirits and I shall cut that person off from his people.

Tyndale's particular translation of dismal days was to be a warning to superstitious folk to reform, but reformation was by no means speedy, or universally accepted. Protestantism had actively discouraged superstition and traditional ceremony that did not have scriptural precedent or contemporary context. People were encouraged to read the Bibles for themselves and discard familiar objects of devotion. was reinforced with Preaching and a wide variety of text propounding Protestant ideology. Though Duffy has suggested that by the 1570's the English nation was a Protestant nation for which Catholicism was a thing of the past, this is perhaps an oversimplification, erasing the impact of that rather annoying interruption of a seamless Protestant agenda between 1553 and 1558 which the Protestant English historian, John Bale, for one, interpreted as God's punishment to His English Reformation Prodigals.