William Tyndale who was a native of Gloucestershire, entered Oxford University at an early age. He became an apt student of languages, and especially of the Scriptures. On graduating from Oxford, about the beginning of the sixteenth century, he went to Cambridge. And there he seems to have continued his studies in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, which were later to prove of such inestimable value in his chosen career. His contact with many of the clergy of the day convinced him of their abysmal ignorance of the Bible, and to one of them he was moved to announce: "If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost!" Eager to proceed with this ambitious plan, Tyndale sought the support of Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London, but, meeting with no encouragement in that quarter, he at length found a patron in one Humphrey Munmouth, a London alderman. It appears to have been while he was lodging at Munmouth's home that Tyndale commenced his translation of the New Testament, but as opposition towards him increased, he was constrained to leave England, and continued his work on the continent. By 1525, his rendering of the New Testament was completed, and the printing of it began at Cologne, but even there his enemies followed him, necessitating a further move to Worms, where at length the first edition was published. Its introduction into England presented a new problem, which was solved by the expedient of sending copies across the channel concealed in bales of cloth, cases of merchandise, and even in sacks of flour. While many of the books were seized and destroyed by order of the ecclesiastical authorities, others were gladly received by the common folk and eagerly read.
Though Tyndale had already accomplished much, he still longed to translate the Old Testament from its original Hebrew, and he succeeded in publishing his rendering of the Pentateuch (Genesis to Deuteronomy) and of the book of Jonah, and in bringing out a revised edition of these and of his New Testament, before his imprisonment in May, 1535. Even during his period of captivity, which lasted more than a year, he continued his work, translating the books from Joshua to II Chronicles. Finally, on October 6, 1536, he paid for his convictions the stern penalty of martyrdom, crying with almost his last breath: "Lord, open the king of England's eyes!" This prayer received its answer the following year in the royal acceptance of the Coverdale and Matthew Bibles, which owed so much to the labors of Tyndale.
It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance of Tyndale's work, in that he was the first to translate into English the whole of the New Testament, and a considerable portion of the Old, direct from the original texts, while his scholarship and fine sense of English style provided a standard for later revisers and translators. He has been justly described as "the true father of our present English Bible."
