90 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



also gives the names of, and payments made to, the 

 executioners and messengers who, as it records, " were 

 engaged in prosecution of the process against WiUiani Tyndale, 

 a priest, a Lutheran prisoner, and executed by fire at 

 Vilvorde for entertaining certain wicked opinions touching 

 the Holy Catholic faith." 



English history records how Henry the Eighth and his 

 counsellors strove to destroy the influence of Tyndale's New 

 Testament. The king writes early in 1527 that of his tender 

 zeal for his subjects, and with advice of the Archbishop of 

 York, he has determined these translations shall be burnt, 

 and that keepers and readers of them shall suffer sharp 

 correction and punishment. Tunstall, bishop of London, 

 declared in a sermon at St. Paul's Cross, that the book 

 contained three thousand errors, and after his sermon the 

 New Testament was first publicly burnt. That no copies 

 might escape destruction, the Archbishop of Canterbury had 

 agents in Germany buying up these English New Testaments 

 for the fire ; and bishops contributed funds to carry out that 

 purpose. The bishop of London licensed "Sir Thomas More 

 to read heretical books that he might confute them, because 

 "You, dearly beloved brother, can play the Demosthenes 

 both in this our English tongue, and also in Latin." More 

 wrote at least four volumes against Tyndale. His New 

 Testament was declared to be as full of errors as the sea is of 

 water, though when forced to name these errors More 

 contented himself b}^ saying Tyndale translates priests, 

 "seniors"; church, "congregation"; and "charity he 

 calleth always love" — no more diversity of meaning, said 

 Coverdale, than that between fourpence and a groat. Not 

 one who entered the lists against Tyndale was more truculent 

 than Sir Thomas, the liberal author of Utopia, the man of 

 whom Gairdner, who so well knew the troubled waters of 

 these days, only a couple of years ago wrote : "He loved 

 men, he loved animals, he loved every influence that tended 

 to humanize or advance society." Yet such was the rancour 

 of these evil days, that Sir Thomas More could write of 



