Trans. Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 131 (2013), 189–198

William Tyndale in Gloucestershire

By BRIAN BUXTON

It has long been reckoned that ‘the father of the English Bible’ came of a Gloucestershire family and certainly he spent some months in the county around 1523, living in the household of Sir John Walsh at Little Sodbury. Curiously, though, for one who arguably may be considered the most significant figure of the Reformation in England, there are real mysteries surrounding periods of his life. It has seemed impossible to be sure where he fitted into the Tyndale family of Gloucestershire. Nor has there been any certainty as to his whereabouts between 1516 and 1523, prior to his appearance at Little Sodbury. The martyrologist John Foxe put him at Cambridge during these years, but more recently it has been suggested that he was in his home county. These two areas of uncertainty are the subject of this article.

‘Born upon the borders of Wales’ In 1712 Sir Robert Atkyns published his great work The Ancient and Present State of Glocestershire. In describing the parish of North Nibley he wrote of ‘William Tyndal, who was burnt in Flanders for his new translating the Bible, and was born in this place’. This identification of North Nibley as the birthplace was also made at about the same time by Chancellor Richard Parsons. Others have been led to consider Stinchcombe an alternative, so that in 2011 an estate agent marketing Melksham Court, Stinchcombe, felt able to write : ‘it is believed that William Tyndale … was born in Melksham Court’.1 Either North Nibley or Stinchcombe is usually considered to have been the most likely home of the family of William Tyndale, although most of those who have investigated his origins have not felt able to speak with the confidence of Atkyns, Parsons or the present day estate agent.2 There is only one source from the 16th century which makes some claim to have knowledge of Tyndale’s birthplace. Twelve years after his execution in Brussels a short paragraph about that event appeared under the year 1535/6 in the book commonly known as Hall’s Chronicles. This includes the sentence: ‘suche as best knewe him reported him to be a very sobre man, borne vpon the borders of Wales, and briought vp in the vniuersitie of Oxford and in life and conuersacion

1. Sir R. Atkyns, The Ancient and Present State of Glocestershire (London 1712: 2nd edn. unrevised 1768), 304; J. Fendley (ed.) Notes on the Diocese of Gloucester by Chancellor Richard Parsons (Glos. Rec. Series 19, BGAS 2005), 105. Parsons wrote of Nibley: ‘Tyndall the martyr born here and his family still remain at Hunt Court having about £100 per annum’. Sale particulars by Smith Gore estate agents, Stow-on-the-Wold, 2009. 2. Slimbridge has sometimes been named also. There appears no justification for this. One branch of the Tyndale family acquired drained marshland there for use as pasture shortly before William’s birth, but there is no suggestion that they lived there. Edward Tyndale, possible brother of William, acquired a lease on a property there, but not until 1516.

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vnreprouable’.3 It sounds as if Hall received information from some person or persons who had known Tyndale but who had only a vague idea as to his home area. Clearly ‘the borders of Wales’ is far from being a precise location. Tracing back through the centuries to discover how the tradition developed of Tyndale’s origins being in the Berkeley area of Gloucestershire proves a rather inconclusive exercise. After Hall’s Chronicles there does not seem to be any claim regarding his birthplace until the statements of Atkyns and Parsons early in the 18th century. It is clear that there was a tradition in the Tyndale family based at Hunts Court, North Nibley, associating William with that place. Those who favoured this belief would quote a pedigree relating to Hunts Court given in 1639 by John Smyth of Nibley, steward of the Berkeley estates. Smyth made no reference to William, but he did say that there was a ‘Hugh Tyndall als Hutchins’ married into the Hunt family and possessing Hunts Court c.1480. At first sight this would seem to show a possession of Hunts Court by Tyndales sufficiently early for it to have been the childhood home of William, whose birth is most commonly placed in either 1490/1 or 1494, but could be slightly earlier. However, what Smyth says conflicts with the documented evidence for the coming together of the Hunts Court estate with that of Melksham Court, Stinchcombe, by the marriage, probably in the first years of the 16th century, of an Alice Hunt, heiress of Hunts Court, with a Thomas Tyndale of Melksham Court. Also, in a clear error, Smyth gives Thomas’ father as John, rather than the recorded Richard.4 The mid 19th-century historian of the Bible in English Christopher Anderson was one of the first to suggest Stinchcombe as an alternative to Nibley, although he himself seemed reluctant to accept this idea.5 There are very clear records which show Tyndales living in Stinchcombe. By the fact of the execution in 1539 of the lord of the manor, Sir Adrian Fortescue, the manorial records of Stinchcombe came into the hands of the state and many still survive in the National Archives. In fact Fortescue only held this manor through marriage, but nevertheless those who cleared his papers on behalf of the Crown removed the Stinchcombe records. These have some references as far back as c.1400 and are more fully detailed from the late 15th century up to the 1530s.6 These records, mainly rentals and minutes of the manorial court, confirm the residence in Stinchcombe of various members not only of the Tyndale family but also of the Hychyns family, and with a few individuals who used both names. The Hychyns references are significant in view of the fact that William Tyndale seems to have called himself ‘William Hychyns’ when at Oxford

3. E. Halle, The Union of the Two Noble Houses of Lancaster and York (1548: Scolar Press, 1970, facsimile of the 2nd edn. of 1550) , ccxxvii. Halle died in 1547 and the work was then completed and published by the printer Richard Grafton. Hall was presumably the source of the identical statement made by John Foxe later in the century. 4. J. Smyth, The Berkeley Manuscripts: A Description of the Hundred of Berkeley in the County of Gloucester and of its Inhabitants, III (ed. J. Maclean , BGAS 1885), 284. For documents clarifying the descent of Melksham Court, see below for the Tyndales at Stinchcombe. Tyndale’s date of birth is unknown. The later date of 1494 was calculated primarily from information in the Oxford university records, whilst the earlier date of 1490/91, the one today more generally favoured, is derived from the fact that he should have been 24 when ordained priest in London in April 1515. He could have received a dispensation to be ordained at a younger age, but searches have found no evidence of such. There is also the possibility that he was older than the minimum age when ordained. 5. C. Anderson, The Annals of the English Bible, I (London 1845), 15ff. 6. The Stinchcombe manorial records are mainly catalogued at the National Archives under Special Collections (SC). I am grateful to Simon Neal, member of the Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives (www.agra.org.uk), who has produced for me translations of the relevant passages.

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and when ordained to the various orders of ministry, and later, in his publications, he sometimes used the name ‘William Tyndale otherwise called William Hychyns’.7 The earliest document, from c.1400, suggests that the Tyndale family were already based on an estate centred on the property known as Melksham Court and including a ‘toft and two acres of land formerly Holderes’ of both of which ‘John Tendale’ was the tenant.8 There is then a gap in the surviving records until 1478, when the existence of the two families, Tyndale and Hychyns, and some link between them, becomes clear. In a rental of that May it appears that the property and land which had been held by John Tendale had been divided. A Tebeta Hochyns was now tenant of Melksham, whilst a Richard Tyndale held the croft known as Holderscroft. In due course, although there are no dates in surviving records, it seems that Richard acquired Melksham as well and that the tenancy of both estates then passed down through his family. There is no evidence as to the relationship between Tebeta and Richard.9 Two sons of Richard, Thomas and William, then held the lands jointly. From 1507 to 1523 there are several rentals which contain this sentence, or similar: ‘Thomas Tyndale alias Huchyns and William Tyndale, his brother, jointly hold by indenture a tenement called Milkesham with a toft called Holdarse and pay per annum £4 17s. 8d.’.10 There were other members of the two families in surrounding areas. Tyndales held land in the Southend area of Stinchcombe and there are references to both families in Cam. However, the only surviving record of a William who could conceivably be the future ‘father of the English Bible’ is that of the William of Melksham Court.11 Probably the most assiduous searcher after Tyndale was B.W. Greenfield, who, after marrying into the Tyndale family, spent 30 years trawling every possible resource in days when archives were far less user-friendly than today and the internet was more than a century away. His work was published in 1878 and lay behind the article of J.H. Cooke in the 1877–8 Transactions. In the light of references to a local priest named William Tyndale in Frampton-on-Severn and Breadstone c.1520 (references to be discussed in the second part of this article), Greenfield, followed by Cooke, assumed that he was the William of Melksham Court who had been ordained. One of these references states that the priest at Breadstone died c.1523. Thus Greenfield and Cooke reckoned that William of Melksham could not be William Tyndale M.12 In the 1954 Transactions, C. Overy and A.C. Tyndale went along with the idea that William of Melksham had been ordained, but, against Greenfield and Cooke, suggested that he was a

7. For a discussion of this point, see A. Hope, ‘Who was William Tyndale?’, in Tyndale Soc. Jnl. 38 (Spring 2010), 10ff. 8. The National Archives (TNA), SC 11/247, rental of the manors of Breadstone and Stinchcombe. The date is uncertain, but possibly Oct. 1416. Attention was first drawn to this reference by C. Overy and A.C. Tyndale in ‘The parentage of William Tyndale, alias Huchyns, translator and martyr’, Trans. BGAS 73 (1954), 209–10. 9. TNA, SC 11/209, rental May 1478; E 315/37, no. 173, April 1511, indenture of lease of ‘tenement in Stynchecombe called Milkeshamus’ to Thomas Tyndale ‘which Richard Tyndale, father of the said Thomas, previously held’. 10. Ibid. SC 11/214, rental Jan. 1507, the first example of Thomas and William as tenants. 11. For the avoidance of confusion, from this point references to William Tyndale, translator, theologian and martyr , will describe him as ‘William Tyndale M’ (M for Martyr). 12. B.W. Greenfield,Notes relating to the family of Tyndale of Stinchcombe and Nibley in Gloucestershire being an attempt to discover the parentage of William Tyndale alias Huchyns translator of the New Testament and martyr (printed by Mitchell & Hughes, 1878); J.H. Cooke, ‘On the Tyndales in Gloucestershire’, Trans. BGAS 2 (1877–8), 29–46.

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different individual from the priest at Frampton-on-Severn and Breadstone and, thus, could have been William Tyndale M.13 The assumption of Greenfield, Cooke, Overy and Tyndale that William of Melksham was ordained has no evidence whatsoever to support it. However, this does not mean that it is impossible. So, what does the evidence tell us about this man? Could he have been ordained and, if so, could he have been William Tyndale M? William’s name first appears in a manorial rental of January 1507, when ‘Thomas Tyndale alias Huchyns and William Tyndale, his brother’ are recorded as paying £4 17s. 8d. as the annual rental. They are described as holding ‘Milksham’ and ‘Holdarse’ jointly by indenture of lease.14 In April 1511 Thomas was granted a new lease by Sir Adrian Fortescue and his wife, Anne. There is no mention in the lease of William, which led Overy and Tyndale to see this as evidence that he was William Tyndale M and that he had gone to Oxford and left Thomas as sole holder of the lease. In fact the wording of the lease could be read as suggesting that William may not have been named even in its missing predecessor, assuming that there was such a lease. It states that Thomas should hold the lease ‘just as the aforesaid Thomas now holds’. Thus it reads as if the lease was essentially a re-statement, or regularizing, of the existing situation. Whilst reference is made back to a holding of the lease by Thomas’ father, there is no reference to any joint holding by Thomas and William. Throughout Thomas appears to have been the lead figure. In the 1478 entries, quoted above, there is written over the name of Tebota ‘Thomas’ and over the name of Richard ‘now Thomas Hochyns’, with no reference to William, although when these amendments were made is unknown.15 However, the records suggest that William was still involved. His name continued to be included in the manorial rentals until that for Michaelmas 1522 to Michaelmas 1523. Whilst it is possible that the clerk simply copied the wording of the entry year after year, it might be thought that it would have been corrected before a decade had elapsed. After this there are no further references to William in the manorial records, nor does any other information about him seem to exist. From this time the use of the alias Hychyns also ceases. The name of Thomas appears a few times over the next few years, and there are a couple of references to payment of the rental, but by Thomas alone.16 If this William was ordained that in itself would not preclude him from involvement in this family estate, but the fact of his being a co-lessee would not necessarily mean that he was required to be physically present there. Thus, there would seem no insuperable barrier to his entering Holy Orders. Whether, if he did, he could have been William Tyndale M is a further issue.

13. Overy and Tyndale, ‘Parentage of Wm. Tyndale’, 211. 14. See note 10. 15. TNA, SC 11/214, rental May 1478. Having suggested that the 1511 lease marked Tyndale’s departure for Oxford, Overy and Tyndale did not consider the issue this raised about his age. In his major biography, William Tyndale (London 1937), 1, J.F. Mozley had recently suggested 1494 as a date of birth, which would have meant that Tyndale was under-age at the time of a lease of 1507 or earlier, a matter to be discussed later. 16. TNA, SC 6/HENVIII/1083 for the final entry naming both brothers. None of the later entries give any suggestion that William had been ordained by the use of ‘chaplain’, ‘clerk’ etc. but manorial records did vary in this matter. In the will of Alice Tyndale (see note 19) there is a reference to a William whose relationship to her is not explained, and in TNA, E 179/114/240, detailing a 1543 subsidy, there is a William at North Nibley. Both these references are likely to have been to a son of Alice mentioned in her deed of settlement (see note 19), but just possibly could be the brother of Thomas who, in that case, could not be William Tyndale M. See TNA, SC 11/208 for an example suggesting Thomas paying the rental alone.

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If this man was William Tyndale M, and if he was born in 1490/1, he would have been under- age until 1511/12. Immediately a difficulty arises as the wording of the annual rentals suggest that he held the lands jointly with his brother by indenture of lease, for which purpose a person would normally have been expected to have attained the age of 21. However, as already noted, any original lease is missing and so its actual wording cannot be checked. The fact that Thomas is clearly treated throughout as the significant partner, and that the name of William is missing from the 1511 lease, although still continuing to be named in the rentals, might possibly be explained by the latter having been under-age. Whilst manors varied in some of their customs, it does seem to have been generally possible for teenage boys to inherit and to be fully involved in the management of family lands, but for some legal purposes, which could well include leases, the age of 21 was often required to have been attained. Of course, it is impossible to know if this is the explanation without the original lease. It may or may not be significant that the final entry naming William as joint lessee of Melksham is in the rental for 1522/3, about the time William Tyndale M is believed to have left Little Sodbury Manor for London.17 An alternative possibility, which would allow for William being identified with William Tyndale M, is to remember that the suggested 1490/1 birth is simply the latest date the latter could have been born allowing him to be ordained priest in 1515 without dispensation. His birth date could have been a few years earlier, thus making him a student and ordinand of slightly more mature years, and of age at the time of the Stinchcombe records. Until study was made, first of the Oxford registers which led to the 1494 date, and later the Hereford and London ordination lists giving rise to the 1490/1 date, an earlier birth date was usually reckoned. For example, in 1871 Robert demaus argued for a date around the mid 1480s. He did this by noting that Tyndale once commented that Thomas More had learnt Greek ‘long ere I’ and he interpreted this to mean that Tyndale was a few years younger than More. If this is what Tyndale meant, and noting that More was born in 1478, probably any birth date from about 1485 would fit. In interpreting the Oxford register entries for William Hychyns it was noted by Andrew Brown that his course leading up to the award of the B.A. degree in 1512 seems to have been shorter than usual. Brown suggested that this may have reflected ‘his exceptional diligence as a student’. Perhaps it also reflected that he was an older than average student.18 In conclusion, the most that can be said with reasonable confidence is that Stinchcombe, or another of the surrounding communities, is likely to have been the place from which the family of William Tyndale M came. The existence there of people calling themselves Tyndale, Hychyns or a combination of both names is something that does not seem to be found elsewhere. Whether William of Melksham can be identified with William Tyndale M seems a possibility, but caution is needed here. To make this identification requires either accepting that the references in the manorial records could be to an under-age boy, or that William Tyndale M was born a little earlier than is generally reckoned today. If neither of these is accepted then William of Melksham was not William Tyndale M.

17. For example, to illustrate some manorial customs, as given in L.R. Poos and L. Bonfield (eds.),Select Cases in Manorial Courts 1250–1550 (Selden Soc. 64, 1998), case 197 from 1352 relates the jurors as saying that ‘every heir, both in younger age and of full age, is able to attain to his inheritance’, but in case 206 from 1537 the actions of a 15 year old in surrendering land were accepted only on condition that he and his pledges ‘when he should attain the full age of twenty-one years, will ratify and confirm the aforesaid surrender’. 18. R. demaus, William Tyndale: a Biography (new edn., revised by R. Lovett, London, 1886), 24. The quotation can be found in W. Tyndale, An Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue (Parker Soc. 1850), 23. A.J. Brown, William Tyndale on Priests and Preachers (Inscriptor Imprints, 1996), 26.

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Two footnotes can be added, the first supportive of the Stinchcombe claim. In the 1540s Alice Tyndale, widow of Thomas and sister-in-law of William of Melksham Court, made a deed of settlement of her lands in North Nibley. A witness to this document, as also later to her will of which he was overseer, and also a feoffee of her lands, was an Edward Tyndale of Hurst at Slimbridge. Presumably this man stood in some close relationship to the Tyndales of Stinchcombe. According to Bishop John Stokesley of London, writing to Thomas Cromwell in 1533, this Edward was brother to the ‘arch heretic’.19 The second footnote slightly confuses the issue. When William Hychyns, generally accepted to be William Tyndale M, was ordained as a sub-deacon in 1514, it was not in the Worcester diocese (within which Stinchcombe then lay), but at Whitbourne in the Hereford diocese. Both then, and when he was ordained deacon and priest in London in 1515, he was described as being of the diocese of Hereford. It was the bishop of Hereford who issued letters dimissory allowing him to be ordained to higher orders elsewhere.20 That part of Gloucestershire which lies west of the Severn was at this period within the Hereford diocese and there are known to have been families of the name of Hychyns – although not Tyndale – in that area. It was probably some family connection which led to William seeking ordination at Hereford. It is unknown as to whether he himself did at some point live west of the river, or whether his claim to ordination at Hereford was more tenuous. Two other men named Hychyns appear in the Hereford ordination lists. At the 1514 ordination at Whitbourne a John Hychyns was ordained as acolyte, whilst back in 1486 a William Hychyns had been ordained deacon by letters dimissory from the bishop of Worcester.21

William Tyndale, chantry priest How William Hychyns, presumed to be William Tyndale M, came to study at Oxford is unknown, as also is the date of his admission there. He received his B.A. in 1512 and his M.A. in 1515. He is last mentioned in the registers of the University of Oxford in 1516, the year following his becoming Master of Arts and being ordained priest in London. Thereafter he has seemed to disappear from view until his arrival at Little Sodbury Manor six or so years later.22 John Foxe in his account of Protestant martyrs, The Acts and Monuments, first wrote of Tyndale going to Cambridge and taking a degree there, but in later editions simply wrote of his being at Cambridge for further study until his going to Little Sodbury Manor.23 Whilst it must be possible

19. Glos. Archives (GA), d 2078, Acc. 4311, 18 Jan. 1542 deed of settlement by Alice as heiress to land in Nibley and Wotton. I am grateful to david Smith for locating this document, as also for his comments on the puzzle of the early references to Tyndales at Hunts Court. Glouc. dioc. Rec. (in GA) wills 1543/4 (Alice Tyndale); TNA, SP 1/74/94 and 100, for letters of John Stokesley to Thomas Cromwell. 20. Brown, William Tyndale on Priests, 12–17 for a detailed account of this man’s ordinations. 21. A.M. Faraday (ed.), Calendar of Probate and Administration Acts 1407–1541 and Abstract of Wills 1541– 81 in the Court Books of the Bishop of Hereford (Brit. Rec. Soc. 1989, on microfiche) for references to families named Hychyns in Gloucestershire west of the Severn. There is also one reference in TNA, CP 25/1/79/94, Feet of Fines Gloucestershire 1469–82; Hope, ‘Who was William Tyndale’, 20–1, for consideration of the Hereford association; A.T. Bannister (ed.), Registrum Ricardi Mayew, Episcopi Herefordensis, 1504–16 (Canterbury and york Soc. 27, 1921), 266 for John Hychyns; A.T. Bannister (ed.), Registrum Thome Mylling, Episcopi Herefordensis, 1474–92 (Canterbury and york Soc. 26, 1920) for William Hychyns ordained deacon 20 May 1486. 22. Brown, William Tyndale on Priests, 26ff for details of entries in the Oxford registers. 23. The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online (HRI Online Publications, Sheffield, 2011). available from: http//www.johnfoxe.org.

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that Foxe picked up a genuine tradition that Tyndale did visit Cambridge, no record of this has ever been found. There is no record of his having taken a degree there, and neither Tyndale himself, nor anybody writing about him, apart from Foxe, mentioned such a visit. If he did not visit Cambridge, or only made a short visit, where else could he have been? The fact of his going to London for his ordination as a priest might suggest that he had hoped for an appointment there. However, again, no evidence of such has been found. Thus, is it possible that he had actually returned to his native county? As was mentioned in the first part of this article, B.W. Greenfield noted a priest named William Tyndale recorded as at Frampton-on-Severn in 1518 and one at Breadstone in 1522. He assumed that these two references were to one man. However, he, followed by all other writers who mentioned this, discounted the possibility that this was William Tyndale M, because the priest at Breadstone is said to have died c.1523. Much more recently Richard Rex has raised the possibility that this man was William Tyndale M. He suggests that the record noting the priest’s death may have been an error, thus allowing for a new interpretation of the evidence.24 The first reference, relating to Frampton-on-Severn, is not mentioned by Rex, nor was it mentioned by Overy and Tyndale, although it had been noted by Greenfield and Cooke. It is in a document of 1536/7 which refers back to a lease made in 1518 between Clifford priory (Herefs.), a Cluniac house which held the advowson of the church of Frampton-on-Severn, and three men from Frampton: William Tyndall, described as ‘chaplain’, James Clyfford, and Thomas Haynes. The lease was of the various lands, rents, tithes etc. possessed by Clifford priory in Frampton.25 The Clifford family had been settled at Frampton-on-Severn since shortly after the Conquest, as it is still today. The Military Survey of Gloucestershire 1522 shows Clifford and Haynes to have been by far the two wealthiest men in the parish, as reflected in their assessment for tax purposes on goods, whilst Clifford’s valuation on land was the second highest in the parish after the lord of the manor, and significantly above other landholders. It may seem surprising that a priest should be able to afford to participate in a lease with these two men.26 Clifford priory appointed a vicar of Frampton-on-Severn, but there was also a chaplain responsible for Our Lady’s chantry in the parish church. Presumably this was the post held by William Tyndale. It is in the Military Survey mentioned above that there is the first reference to a priest named William Tyndale at Breadstone. There is no proof that this was the same priest as at Frampton- on-Severn, but that must be a possibility. Certainly there is no priest of that name recorded at Frampton in 1522, which suggests that he had moved on. Breadstone lay within the parish of Berkeley, but had its own chapel to house a chantry founded in the 14th century.27 A further reference to this chantry appears in the register of Bishop Ghinucci of Worcester, not clearly dated but quite probably February 1524. This records the appointment of a new priest ‘per mortem Dni Will Tyndale alias Hewchyns’. The presentation was by Sir Adrian Fortescue.28 The giving of the alias ‘Hewchyns’ makes this even more interesting but ‘per mortem’ poses the problem. In fact there are three potential problems about identifying this man with William Tyndale M which need to be considered.

24. R. Rex, ‘ New light on Tyndale and Lollardy’, Reformation 8 (2003), 148ff. 25. TNA, SC 6/HENVIII/7319 for details of the lease. 26. R.W. Hoyle (ed.), The Military Survey of Gloucestershire 1522 (Glos. Rec. Series 6, BGAS 1993), 183. 27. Ibid. 146; J. Maclean, ‘Chantry certificates, Gloucestershire’,Trans. BGAS 8 (1883–4), 306 for details of the chantry. 28. Worcs. Archives (WA), BA 2648/716.093/9(i), f. 41. I am grateful to the staff there for their helpful efficiency when I visited to view the Worcester registers.

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Firstly, if this man did die by February 1524, then clearly he was not William Tyndale M, but Rex’s suggestion that this is an accidental or deliberate mistake by a clerk could make good sense. The exact date and circumstances of the arrival of William Tyndale M at Little Sodbury Manor, and the duration of his stay there, are unknown. Nor is it known whether his time at Little Sodbury followed on from a previous appointment, or whether it overlapped, as Rex suggests it may have done, with an appointment at Breadstone. Thus he sees that a departure from Breadstone may have been messy, without a formal resignation, which could have led a clerk to add ‘per mortem’ either in error or for convenience. The clerk, working some 40 miles away in Worcester, may have been confused by the disappearance of this priest without his having any new appointment in the diocese and so may have assumed his death. It is impossible to be sure either way as to the accuracy of the entry, but such an error is certainly feasible. The second issue posed by official records is the presence of a William Hychyns as warden of the chantry or college at Breadstone in 1498 and the possibility that he was the same man recorded there in 1522 and 1524. In material relating to a vacancy in the see of Worcester found in the register of Archbishop John Morton there is a list of clergy and churchwardens summoned to a visitation in the parish church of St James, dursley, on 9 November 1498. These included ‘Dne Willmus Hechyns guardianus de Bredstone’.29 In order to make the way open to accept the later priest at Breadstone as being William Tyndale M, it would be desirable to show that the William Hychyns of 1498 had resigned or died by the 1520s. Unfortunately this cannot be done. Rex points out the significant gaps in the Worcester registers which must hide many resignations, deaths and appointments, not least the gap in entries between 1517 and 1522, when the later William Tyndale could have been appointed. In a list made for tax purposes in 1513, Rex noted no priest in the Berkeley area by the name of Hychyns or Tyndale, only a William Higgins, just conceivably a variant spelling of Hychyns, but this name not linked with Breadstone. However, Rex does not mention in the same list a William Hychyns recorded at Little Comberton (Worcs.) in the Pershore deanery. Could this be the man from Breadstone having moved on? Also, of course, if the Tyndale at Frampton- on-Severn and Breadstone are the same man then this suggests a vacancy at Breadstone around 1520. Once again no certainty exists, but the possibility of a new appointment to Breadstone c.1520 is not ruled out.30 The third problem is probably the first that would occur to those familiar with the later writing of William Tyndale M. Could a man who spoke out so strongly against the idea of purgatory and intercessions for the dead have ever been a chantry priest whose foremost role was a concern for the souls of the founder of their chantry and all other Christian souls? William Tyndale M left no timeline to tell us how his beliefs developed. What we do know is that he was ordained priest in 1515 and must then have been willing to say and hear masses with prayers for the departed. When he left Little Sodbury c.1523 and went to London it was to seek an appointment in the household of the bishop of London where he could work on his translation of the New Testament. Had he been successful, he could hardly have opted out of the mass, even if by then he had personal reservations. Maybe he had to compromise his conscience as so many must have done through the years of the Reformation, but that we cannot know. In the early 16th century it was often a long haul before a priest attained a benefice and many years would be spent in lesser appointments, of which serving as a chantry priest would be one

29. Lambeth Palace Library (LPL), Register of Archbishop John Morton, I, f. 177v. I am grateful to the staff there for their very helpful responses to several distance queries. 30. Some Worcester material for 1521 is also found in LPL, Register of Archbishop William Warham, but it has no reference to Breadstone. See WA, BA 2648/716.093/8(i) for tax list.

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very common type of post. It is important to recognize that such posts did not simply require the priest to say masses for the dead. The founder of the Breadstone chantry decreed that two chaplains were to ‘celebrate divine services every single day in the said chapel for his salubrious state, while he is alive, and for his soul, when he is dead, and the soul of Isabel, formerly his wife, and the souls of his ancestors and heirs and of all the faithful deceased’. This wording might suggest a limited role for the priests, but, serving a chapel some two miles from the parish church of Berkeley, they would no doubt act as parish priests to the people of that community, and possibly teachers of children as well.31 For Frampton-on-Severn there is an insight into the role of the priest just a few years after the time of William Tyndale. In the reign of Elizabeth I a case was heard in the Court of Requests concerning the ‘scole howse’ at Frampton. Evidence was called from an elderly member of the community who recollected that in the 1530s the ‘morowe masse’ priests or ‘sowle or seint Mary priests’ lived in the house and he attested that he himself had been scholar under one of these men. Clearly schoolmastering was part of that priest’s role.32 Some chantry foundation documents spelled out in detail additional duties of the priest, maybe acting in effect as curates or assistant priests in a parish church or, as at Breadstone, in effect serving a chapelry as parish priest. In a recent study of wills in Bristol it has been argued by Clive Burgess that those who left bequests to found chantries and to say masses for their souls were not simply self-interested. He argues that this was their way of giving additional staffing to the liturgical and pastoral needs of the parish. He suggests that ‘we should recognize chantry priests as generous donations’.33 Thus, taking into account these various considerations, it may not be so difficult to envisage the young William Tyndale M as serving the role of chantry priest in Frampton-on-Severn and then in Breadstone. In the first he would presumably have been working alongside a more experienced parish priest and then in the latter he would have had greater personal responsibility and independence. Whilst there remains uncertainty here, not least because of the recorded death in 1523, if the priest at Frampton-on-Severn and Breadstone was William Tyndale M then that would explain where he was during the ‘missing years’ of 1516 to 1523. He would be found back in his home territory holding just the kind of posts normally occupied by young clergy at this time. Of course, if the possibility of an error in the Worcester register is rejected, and if the priest at Breadstone was the same man as was there in 1498, then the Tyndale at Frampton-on-Severn was presumably a different person and his identity requires some explanation. He seems to have moved on by 1522. If he did not take up an appointment at Breadstone, then perhaps this was William Tyndale M. Instead of teaching the children of Frampton, maybe he was teaching the children of Sir John Walsh at Little Sodbury and perhaps the children of neighbours as well.

31. TNA, E 211/342 for the foundation charter from which the quotation is translated. 32. Ibid. REQ 2/120/6 for Frampton-on-Severn. Another example of an educational foundation linked with a chantry was the grammar school at Wotton-under-Edge, which some have suggested Tyndale may have attended, for which see both d. Green, ‘Lady Katherine’s school’, Tyndale Soc. Jnl. 16 (2000), 11ff; B. Wells-Furby, The Berkeley Estate 1281–1417: its economy and development (BGAS monograph, 2012), 35. 33. C. Burgess, ‘Chantries in the parish’, Jnl. of Brit. Archaeol. Assoc. 164(1) (2011), 100–29. For a more general comment on the purpose of chantries, see E. duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (yale Univ. Press, 1992), 139–41. For a comment on the purpose of chantries as reflected in evidence from Gloucestershire, see Maclean, ‘Chantry certs.’, 230–1.

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And so to Little Sodbury This is one of the very few periods in his life for which we possess a detailed account. John Foxe places him there as tutor to Sir John’s children, but, as much as anything, this may have been an arrangement which provided Tyndale a quiet base for study and translation. Foxe recounts his arguments with the local clergy and his declaration that he would seek to ensure that the ploughboy knew the scripture better than they did. After a few months, the pressure on both he and his host growing, he departed Gloucestershire for London. Finding no support for his translation work from the bishop of London, within the year he was abroad. Soon he was no longer an obscure Gloucestershire priest, but on his way to becoming, for some, a revered figure of the Reformation, the ‘father of the English Bible’; whilst to others he was the ‘arch heretic’ of Stokesley’s letter. As he turned his face away from Gloucestershire, for what proved to be the last time, martyrdom was on the horizon.

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