Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/406

Rh 386 ENGLISH BIBLE 1537. same year, a third edition in quarto. On the title-page of the latter were added the words, &quot;set forth with the Kynge s moost gracious licence.&quot; The words at first printed on the title-page, and sub sequently cancelled, had baen doubtless placed there by mistake. In his dedication to the king, Coverdale says, &quot; I have with a clear conscience purely and faithfully trans lated this out of five sundry interpreters, having only the manifest truth of the Scriptures before mine eyes.&quot; These &quot; five interpreters &quot; would naturally be Bibles in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, and English, the English being that with which Coverdale must long have been familiar, the Wickliffite version, together with the recent translations of Tyndale. 1 It should be added that Coverdale s Bible was the first in which the non-canonical books were collected out of the body of the Old Testament and placed by themselves at the end of it under a separate title. Coverdale entitled them &quot; The Volume of the Book called Hagiographa,&quot; but this was changed to &quot; Apocrypha &quot; in the Great Bible of 1549. Mat- The large sale of the New Testaments of Tyndale, and thew s the success of Coverdale s Bible, showed the London book- Bible, sellers that a new and profitable branch of business was opened out to them, and they soon began to avail them selves of its advantages. Richard Grafton and Edward Whitchurch, afterwards the king s printers, were the first in the field, bringing out a fine and full-sized folio in 1537, the same year in which Coverdale s second edition appeared, &quot; truely and purely translated into English by Thomas Matthew.&quot; This volume was prepared for the press at Antwerp by &quot; John Rogers alias Matthew,&quot; who was for some time (1534-1548) chaplain to the Merchant Ad venturers there, whose wife, Adriana Pratt, was a rela tive of Jacob Van Meteren, and who returning to England in 1548 became canon of St Paul s, and was the first of the sufferers at Smithfield in the reign of Queen Mary. It was not, however, &quot; translated by Thomas Matthew,&quot; but was a compilation from the translations of Tyndale and Coverdale, made under the editorship of Rogers, who revised them to some extent before sending them to press. The Pentateuch was printed from Tyndale s translation of 1531 ; and the books from Joshua to the end of Chronicles are said to have been translated by Tyndale also a tradition corroborated by internal evidence (Westcott s Eng. Bible, p. 224) and to have been left by him in the hands of Rogers. From Ezra to Malachi the translation is taken from Coverdale, as is also that of the Apocryphal books. The New Testament is a revised copy of Tyndale s edition of 1535. Thus, as the book consists of 1100 pages, more than half, or 600 pages, must be assigned to Tyndale, and the remaining 500 pages to Coverdale. It is probable that the Matthew Bible was printed by Antwerp booksellers as a speculation, in the same manner as the New Testament had been brought out under the editorship of Joye by the &quot; widowe of Christoffel of End- hoven,&quot; in 1534. But while it was at the press, Grafton and Whitchurch appear to have stepped in with an offer to purchase the work, their initials being found on a title-page which is placed before the prophecy of Isaiah. This view 1 The above conclusion is not at all contradicted by Coverdale s statement in his address to the reader, that &quot; To help me therein I have had sundry translations, not only in Latin, but also of the Dutch&quot; or German &quot;interpreters, whom, because of their singular gifts and special diligence in the Bible, I have been the more glad to follow for the most part, according as I was required.&quot; He thinks it quite un necessary to say that he translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek, but adds, that he was far from rejecting all help and guidance as to the meaning of Hebrew and Greek words, gladly and humbly looking to see how others had interpreted the words into Latin and Gtennan. is confirmed by the fact that in the following year, 1538, there was &quot; Imprynted at Antwerpe by Matthew Crom &quot; a New Testament in which the text of Coverdale was used, with the prologues of Tyndale, a concordance, some anno tations, and nearly 200 woodcuts being added by the enter prising printer. In whatever way the Matthew Bible originated, the edition of 1500 copies was purchased by Grafton for the sum of 500, equal to about .6000 of modern money; and, having obtained leave to place on the title-page &quot; Set forth with the King s most gracyous licence,&quot; he and his partner published it in the summer of 1537. Grafton was afraid that rivals would step in and deprive him of the profits which he expected. He therefore entreated Secretary Cromwell that the sale of his Bible might be expedited by compelling every abbey to take six copies. He also complained that there were &quot; Dutchmen dwelling within the realm, who can neither speak good English, nor write none, who yet will both print and correct such an edition, and who are so covetous that they will not bestow twenty or forty pounds on a learned man as editor.&quot; Perhaps the rival edition which he really feared may have been one which was published in 1539 by &quot;John Byddell for Thomas Barthlet,&quot; with Richard Taverner, &quot; a learned man, Tav as editor.&quot; This was, in fact, what would now be called a er s &quot;piracy,&quot; being Grafton s &quot;Matthew Bible&quot; revised by B ^ J ] Taverner, a learned member of the Inner Temple, who had J been one of Wolsey s students at Christ Church, and although a layman, had occasionally preached from the university pulpit. Taverner made many alterations in the Matthew Bible, and the rapidity with which he edited the work indicates that he must have used a Bible already annotated by himself as the basis of his labours. 2 Taverner s Bible was printed in folio with &quot; Cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum &quot; on the title-page, and it was at the same time printed in quarto. In the same year folio and quarto editions of the New Testament alone were published, and in the following year, 1540, the New Testament in duodecimo. The Old Testament was reprinted as part of a Bible of 1551. but no other editions are known than those named. It will have been observed that the translations of Holy Scripture which had been printed during these, fourteen years (1526-1539) were all made by private men and printed without any public authority. Some of them had indeed been set forth by the king s licence, but the object of this is shown by a letter of Archbishop Cranmer to Secretary Cromwell, requesting that it might be given to Matthew s Bible. It is &quot; that the same may be sold and read of every person, without danger of any act, proclamation, or ordinance heretofore granted to the contrary, until such time that we, the bishops, shall set forth a better translation, which I think will not be till a day after doomsday.&quot; This letter was written on August 4, 1537, and the impatient words at the end refer to an authorized version which had been projected several years before, and which was, in fact, at that very time in preparation, though not proceeding quickly enough to satisfy Cranmer. In the year 1530 Henry VIII. issued a commission of Prep inquiry respecting the expediency and necessity of having tlon &quot; in the English tongue both the New Testament and the ^j lori Old,&quot; the commission consisting of Sir Thomas- More, the versi two archbishops, and the bishop of London, together with seventeen other &quot; discreet and well-learned personages &quot; taken from the two universities and &quot; other parts of his realm,&quot; whose names are recorded, together &quot; with many more learned men of the said universities in great numbe assembled then and there together&quot; (Wilkins s Cone., iii. 2 Such Bibles of early date are not uncommon ; one is now before the writer which is full of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin notes.