94 JOlTRNAIv AND PROCEEDINGS 



. the title reference is made to Aune Boleyn in these words : 

 " Your dearest, just wyfe and most vertuons Pryncesse 

 Quene Anne, Aineii." Other later copies bore in lieu of 

 Anne's name that of Queen Jane (Seymour). 



The Matthew's Bible was published in 1537. Of its 

 eleven hundred pages six hundred are credited to Tyndale, 

 who left his unpublished papers with his friend John Rogers, 

 and five hundred are assigned to Coverdale's credit. Thomas 

 Matthew is a pseudonym for Rogers, who revised and edited 

 this Bible. The fictitious name prevented hostility from the 

 bishops. Cranmer wrote Secretary Thomas Cromwell that 

 interim permission to sell and read this Bible without risk 

 might be granted till such time as the bishops shall provide a 

 better translation, and the Archbishop petulantly adds : 

 "That, I think, will not be till a day after doomsday." 

 The Taverner Bible is dated London, 1539. It is essentially 

 a reissue of the Rogers Bible, with some amendments and 

 notes. 



These first English Bibles were the work of private 

 scholars and printers, and Cromwell and Cranmer at length 

 obtained consent of the King to prepare an authoritative 

 version, that should be of larger size and better printed than 

 those of earlier issue. It was decided that Francis Regnault, 

 the French printer, who for many years had a shop in 

 London, and who printed most of the service books used in 

 England for fifteen years, should print this new BiWe. 

 Terms were settled with the French King, and Coverdale as 

 editor and Grafton as printer went to Paris to oversee the 

 work. Hans Holbein devised an artistic title-page in black 

 and red, set within an ornamental border, showing the King, 

 Cranmer and Cromwell distributing Bibles to the people, and 

 its ample page, beauty of type and fineness of paper taxed to 

 the utmost the printing art of that day. 



As for the translation itself, the title-page declared it to 

 be the work of divers learned men skilled in Hebrew and 

 Greek. Whether the bishops contributed much of the 

 translation is not known, though it is certain Coverdale had 



