mind it if they could not understand the Canterbury Tales, when read out to them, they felt it as a grievance that the 'word of God.' should not be as intelligible to them as it was to their forefathers. Tyndale (1526) undertook to retranslate the Bible; but the authorities of the Church would not permit him to do so. There was then a law which said that those who read the scriptures in their native tongue should forfeit land, cattle, life, goods—they and their heirs for ever." Tyndale had, therefore, to go to Germany and finished his work there, though frequently disturbed. Copies of his Bible were smuggled into England. The Bishp of London bought all the Copies he could get and burned them. Tyndale himself was at last arrested and strangled to death and his dead body was burnt and reduced to ashes. His offence was communicating the word of God in the English tongue. It seems strange to us now that men should during those days have lost their lives in their attempts to popularise the Bible among the common people and this too in England.
Tyndale's Bible soon became the one great book which England read. It was read in all sorts of places, under all kinds of circumstances and by all sorts of people. It rapidly found its way to the universities. It was read by the merchant, the
