reign
printers had so large a share in the English Bible that it seemed
sometimes advisable to limit their influence. Richard Grafton writes
ironically to Cromwell regarding the text of the Bible: "Yea and to make
it yet truer than it is, therefore Dutchmen dwelling within this realm
go about the printing of it, which can neither speak good English, nor
yet write none, and they will be both the printers and correctors
thereof";[165] and Coverdale and Grafton imply a similar fear in the
case of Regnault, the Frenchman, who has been printing service books,
when they ask Cromwell that "henceforth he print no more in the English
tongue, unless he have an Englishman that is learned to be his
corrector."[166] Moreover, versions of the Scriptures in other languages
than English were not unknown in England. In 1530 Henry the Eighth was
led to prohibit "the having of holy scripture, translated into the
vulgar tongues of English, _French_, or _Dutch_."[167] Besides this
general familiarity with foreign translations and foreign printers, a
more specific indebtedness must be recognized. More's attack on the book
"which whoso calleth the New Testament calleth it by a wrong name,
except they will call it Tyndale's testament or Luther's testament"[168]
is in some degree justified in its reference to German influence.
Coverdale acknowledges the aid he has received from "the Dutch
interpreters: whom (because to their singular gifts and special
diligence in the Bible) I have been the more glad to follow."[169] The
preface to the version of 1611 says, "Neither did we think much to
consult the translators or commentators, Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Greek,
or Latin, no, nor the _Spanish_, _French_, _Italian_, or _Dutch_."[170]
Doubtless a great part of the debt lay in matters of exegesis, but in
his familiarity with so great a number of translations into other
languages and with the discussion centering around these translations,
it is impossible that the English translator should have failed to
obtain suggestions, both practical and theoretical, which applied to
translation rather than to interpretation. Comments on the general aims
and methods of translation, happy turns of expression in French or
German which had their equivalents in English idiom, must frequently
have illuminated his difficulties. The translators of the Geneva Bible
show a just realization of the truth when they speak of "the great
opportunity and occasions which God hath