years later, is full
of Lutheran doctrine, and so is another book very popular at the time,
Simon Fish's _Supplication of Beggars_. John Skelton's _Colyn Clout_,
[Sidenote: c. 1522] a scathing indictment of the clergy, mentions that

Some have smacke
Of Luther's sacke,
And a brennyng sparke
Of Luther's warke.

{284} [Sidenote: William Tyndale's Bible]

But the acceptance of the Reformation, as apart from mere grumbling at
the church, could not come until a Protestant literature was built up.
In England as elsewhere the most powerful Protestant tract was the
vernacular Bible. Owing to the disfavor in which Wyclif's doctrines
were held, no English versions had been printed until the Protestant
divine William Tyndale highly resolved to make the holy book more
familiar to the ploughboy than to the bishop.

Educated at both Oxford and Cambridge, Tyndale imbibed the doctrines
first of Erasmus, then of Luther, and finally of Zwingli. Applying for
help in his project to the bishop of London and finding none,
[Sidenote: 1524] he sailed for Germany where he completed a translation
of the New Testament, and started printing it at Cologne. Driven hence
by the intervention of Cochlaeus and the magistrates, he went to Worms
and got another printer to finish the job. [Sidenote: 1526] Of the
six thousand copies in the first edition many were smuggled to England,
where Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London, tried to buy them all up,
"thinking," as the chronicler Hall phrased it, "that he had God by the
toe when he indeed had the devil by the fist." The money went to
Tyndale and was used to issue further editions, of which no less than
seven appeared in the next ten years.

The government's attitude was that

Having respect to the malignity of this present time,
with the inclination of the people to erroneous opinions,
the translation of the New Testament should rather be the
occasion of continuance or increase of errors among the
said people than any benefit or commodity towards the
weal of their souls.

But the magistrates were unable to quench the fiery zeal of Tyndale who
continued to translate parts of the Old Testament and to print them and
other tracts at Antwerp and at Cologne, until his martyrdom at {285}
Vilvorde, near Brussels, on October 6, 1536. In 1913 a monument was
erected on the place of his death.

Under the leadership of Tyndale on the one side and of More on the
other the ai