A Plough-Boy and a King: Tyndale's Bible, Cranmer's Prayer Book and the Making of the English Church

In 1526 England belonged to the Western church under the pope. Henry VIII, king since 1509, had been given the title 'Defender of the Faith' by the pope in 1521 for a book against Luther. The church held vast lands. Bishops sat in the House of Lords, and Cardinal Wolsey, the king's chief minister, was also a papal legate. Services were in Latin. Since 1409 it had been against the law in England to translate the Bible into English or read such a translation without a bishop's permission.

That law answered John Wycliffe (about 1328-1384), an Oxford teacher who held that Scripture is the supreme authority and that every Christian should be able to read it. English translations from the Latin Vulgate, made by Wycliffe's circle in the 1380s and 1390s, were copied by hand and read in secret. His followers were called Lollards, perhaps from a Dutch word for a mumbler. After 1401 heretics could be burned in England. The Council of Constance condemned Wycliffe in 1415, and in 1428 his bones were dug up and burned. Lollard groups lived on in Essex, Kent and the Chilterns, and in 1511 the Archbishop of Canterbury prosecuted dozens of them for owning English books.

Three new things arrived around 1516 to 1526. Printing made books cheap to copy. Erasmus published the first printed Greek New Testament in 1516. And Luther's protest, from 1517, showed that a theologian could defy Rome and survive. The wider world was moving too. In 1526 the Ottomans won the battle of Mohacs in Hungary. Portuguese soldiers helped the Ethiopian Church against invasion in 1541, and Francis Xavier landed in Japan in 1549. In 1555 English merchants of the Muscovy Company opened trade with Orthodox Russia. England's Reformation was a local drama with a dynastic spine. It turned on one question: who would rule the church, and who would read the Bible?

The first question of the age was who may read Scripture, and in what language. Tyndale held that the whole people could, and that priests who kept the Bible in Latin were keeping it from them. 1 Peter 2:2 told every Christian to long for the pure milk of the word, and 1 Peter 2:9 called the whole church a royal priesthood. He argued that Scripture has one plain sense, the one the words give, and that the Spirit and the rest of Scripture guide the reader. Thomas More answered that the Bible came to the people through the church, that the church had always decided what it means, and that an English Bible in untrained hands would feed heresy. He also charged Tyndale with bending the text, because Tyndale had translated the Greek ekklesia as 'congregation' rather than 'church', and presbyteros as 'senior' rather than 'priest', and metanoeite as 'repent' rather than 'do penance'. Tyndale replied that he was only giving the Greek words their own meaning.

The second question was who governs the church. Henry's party read 1 Peter 2:13-17 and Romans 13:1-7 as saying that the king is supreme over all in his realm, and pointed to Israel's kings David and Josiah, who ordered worship. More and the Catholic bishops answered with Matthew 16:18-19, where Christ gave Peter the keys, and Acts 5:29, 'We ought to obey God rather than men.' The Church of England's own Article 37 later said the monarch has the chief power but does not minister the word and sacraments. Article 6 said Scripture contains all things necessary for salvation and that nothing may be required as a point of faith that cannot be proved from it. The Apocrypha could be read for example of life, the Article said, but not to establish doctrine.

The Reformers were not agreed among themselves. Puritans said the church should have no practice that Scripture does not command. The Prayer Book and the Elizabethan bishops said it may keep whatever Scripture does not forbid. Defenders of the settlement cited 1 Corinthians 14:40, 'Let all things be done decently and in order.' The Geneva Bible's margin notes, written to guide the reader, drew sharp objections from King James after 1603, because some taught that kings too stand under God's word.

William Tyndale was born in Gloucestershire about 1494 and studied at Oxford and probably Cambridge. As a tutor in a gentry household he argued with local clergy, and Foxe reports that he told one of them he would make a plough-boy know more Scripture than the clergyman did. In 1523 he asked the Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, for a place to translate. Tunstall refused. London merchants helped him leave in 1524 for the Continent. He began printing a New Testament at Cologne in 1525, but the work was raided and he fled up the Rhine to Worms, where Peter Schoeffer printed the complete New Testament in 1526. Tyndale worked from Erasmus's Greek text, with the Latin and Luther's German beside him. His English is plain and rhythmic and gave the language words such as 'Passover' and 'scapegoat'.

Copies came into England hidden in bales of cloth and other goods. Tunstall condemned the book at Paul's Cross in London and had copies burned, and by one account the archbishop of Canterbury bought up copies to destroy them. More's Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1529) answered Tyndale in print, and Tyndale answered More in 1531. In 1528 Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man argued that kings, not popes, rule the realm. Henry is said to have liked it. Tyndale also published a Pentateuch (1530) and Jonah. But he opposed Henry's divorce on the ground of Deuteronomy 25:5, and that angered the king. Henry Phillips, an Englishman, lured him out of safety in Antwerp in May 1535, and he was held about sixteen months in the castle of Vilvoorde. He was condemned as a heretic. In early October 1536 he was strangled and his body burned. Foxe reports his last words as a prayer: 'Lord, open the king of England's eyes.'

Henry's quarrel with Rome began over an heir. Catherine of Aragon had given him a daughter, Mary, and no surviving son. Henry asked for an annulment, citing Leviticus 20:21, and Pope Clement VII, who was under the control of Catherine's nephew the Emperor Charles V, would not grant it. Between 1529 and 1534 a Parliament cut the pope's rights step by step. Cranmer became archbishop in 1533, annulled the marriage, and the Act of Supremacy of 1534 made the king 'Supreme Head' of the church. The motives were mixed and the evidence shows it. Henry wanted an heir and his own authority, and the crown gained the lands of about 800 monasteries between 1536 and 1540. Yet Cranmer, Latimer, Thomas Cromwell and many others held evangelical convictions, and Henry himself wrote against Luther and kept Catholic teaching on the Mass in his Six Articles of 1539. More and Bishop John Fisher were executed in 1535 for refusing the oath. In 1536 the Pilgrimage of Grace, a mass northern rising, rose partly against these changes. Henry also burned Protestants, such as Anne Askew in 1546.

The Bible came in through the same door. Coverdale's Bible of 1535 was the first complete English Bible in print. Matthew's Bible (1537), largely Tyndale's work with Coverdale's, was licensed by the king a year after Tyndale burned. The Great Bible of 1539, edited by Coverdale, was ordered placed in every parish church, chained to a desk. An Act of 1543 then forbade women (except those of noble or gentle birth, who could read privately) and most working men to read it.

Edward VI was nine when he became king in 1547. Under his regents the church moved fast toward the Reformation. Cranmer wrote the 1549 Book of Common Prayer in English, one use for the whole realm. It set the Psalms to be read through each month and most of Scripture each year. The 1552 revision went further and rewrote the Communion service in Reformed terms. In the west of England, Cornish and Devon people rose in 1549 against the new book, and some said they did not understand English. The rising was put down by force. Cranmer's government burned two Anabaptists, Joan Bocher in 1550 and George van Parris in 1551.

Mary I (1553-1558), Henry's Catholic daughter, brought England back under Rome in 1554 with Cardinal Reginald Pole. The heresy laws were revived. Between February 1555 and her death in November 1558, about 280 to 300 people were burned, most of them ordinary tradespeople and farm workers. Rogers, who had edited Matthew's Bible, was first. Latimer and Ridley were burned together at Oxford on 16 October 1555. Cranmer had signed several recantations, then refused, at his public burning, to deliver the last one on 21 March 1556, and held his right hand in the fire first. About 800 others fled to Frankfurt, Strasbourg, Zurich and Geneva. Mary and Pole died within hours of each other on 17 November 1558.

Elizabeth's Acts of 1559 made her 'Supreme Governor' and restored a Prayer Book close to the 1552 text, with wording on the Lord's Supper broad enough for both sides to use. All of Mary's bishops but one refused the oath and were removed. Convocation adopted the Thirty-Nine Articles in 1563. From Geneva the exiles had brought the Geneva Bible (1560), the first English Bible with numbered verses, printed small and cheap, with notes. The Church of England was Protestant in doctrine and kept bishops and a set liturgy. Puritans wanted further reform of vestments, ceremonies and bishops, and some were suspended or imprisoned. Henry Barrow, John Greenwood and John Penry were hanged in 1593 for separatist writings. On the other side, the pope excommunicated Elizabeth in 1570 and Jesuit missionaries arrived in 1580. Catholics who stayed away from church (recusants) were fined, from 1581 at 20 pounds a month. In 1585 it became treason for a priest ordained abroad to be in England. About 180 Catholics, mostly priests and those who sheltered them, were executed in her reign, among them Campion in 1581 and the York housewife Margaret Clitherow in 1586. Her successor commissioned the new translation that appeared as the King James Bible in 1611, which kept much of Tyndale's wording.

Behind the politics were doctrines. The first was authority. Tyndale and the Articles taught that Scripture judges the church, and they appealed to 2 Timothy 3:15-17 and Mark 7:7-9. Catholics replied that Christ gave authority to the apostles and their successors (Matthew 16:18-19; 18:18; 2 Thessalonians 2:15), and that the church's tradition guards the meaning of Scripture. The English Reformers held that the church has authority in matters of order but may not teach anything contrary to the written word.

The second was salvation. Article 11 taught that a person is counted righteous before God by faith alone, through Christ's merit, citing Romans 3:28 and Ephesians 2:8-9. Catholic theology said faith is the root of justification but is completed in love and works (James 2:24, Galatians 5:6). Article 17 spoke of predestination in language close to Romans 8:29-30 and Ephesians 1:4-5, and most English Protestants of the age read it in the Reformed way.

The third was the Lord's Supper, which divided Protestants as well as Rome from England. Catholics held transubstantiation, resting on Matthew 26:26-28 and John 6:53-56. The Prayer Book of 1549 kept more traditional language. The 1552 book and Article 28 denied transubstantiation. Cranmer taught that Christ is truly present to the believer who receives in faith (1 Corinthians 10:16; 11:23-26), and historians still argue whether his view was nearer Calvin or Zwingli. A fourth issue was the priesthood. The Reformers drew on 1 Peter 2:5, 9 and Hebrews 7:27 to say all believers are priests and that Christ's one offering needs no repeating. The Catholic and Orthodox churches kept an ordained priesthood and a sacrificial understanding of the Mass and Divine Liturgy, citing apostolic succession.

Everyone in this story claimed Christ. Tyndale's prologue explained that 'gospel' means good news, and he presented the New Testament as the news of Christ. Cranmer's Prayer Book ends its collects with 'through Jesus Christ our Lord' and its Communion prayer speaks of Christ's 'one oblation of himself once offered', a 'full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice'. 1 Peter 2:24 says Christ 'bare our sins in his own body on the tree', and Reformers placed that at the center of preaching: salvation as a gift rather than a payment. The most striking effect of the English Bible was that ordinary people, if they could read or heard it read in church, met the Gospels in their own language.

The record is also hard on this point. 1 Peter 2:21-23 holds up Christ as the one who, 'when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not.' The martyrs of this century, Protestant and Catholic, often quoted that passage. But the same churches took turns with the stake and the scaffold. Henry burned evangelicals and executed Catholics, and Cranmer's government burned Anabaptists. Mary burned Protestants, and Elizabeth's judges hanged priests and separatists. Each side described its suffering as witness and its enemies' as punishment. The Scriptures these Christians loved condemn that division, and they did not stop it.