Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/431

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[q. v.], master of the horse, and he solicited in person the patronage of Tunstall. Tunstall was a courtly scholar with little sympathy for reform, and declined to give Tyndale any help. Disappointed in this hope, he obtained employment as preacher at St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, where his discourses found favour with one of his auditors, Humphrey Monmouth (d. 1537), a cloth merchant and citizen of London, who was afterwards knighted and served as sheriff in 1535. Monmouth took him to his house for half a year and paid him 10l. sterling to pray for his ‘father and mother their souls, and all Christian souls’ (‘Petition of Humphrey Monmouth to Wolsey’ in Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, iv. No. 4282). During his residence in London Tyndale first came under the influence of Luther's opinions, and also formed a firm friendship with John Frith [q. v.], who was burned as a protestant in 1533. He, however, found it impossible to accomplish his translation of the New Testament in England, and in May 1524 set sail for Hamburg, leaving most of his books with Monmouth. From Hamburg he went to Wittenberg to visit Luther, and probably remained there till April 1525, when he returned to Hamburg to receive a remittance from England. During this period he was busily engaged in his task of translation, employing William Roy (fl. 1527) [q. v.] as his amanuensis. From Hamburg Tyndale and Roy proceeded to Cologne, where they made arrangements with Quental and Byrckmann for printing the translation. The work had proceeded as far as the sheet bearing the signature K when it was discovered, soon after the beginning of September, by the catholic controversialist John Cochlæus, dean of the church of the Blessed Virgin at Frankfurt, for whom the same firm were bringing out an edition of the works of Rupert, a former abbot of Deutz. Cochlæus obtained an injunction from the senate of Cologne interdicting the printers from proceeding with the work, and wrote to Henry VIII and Wolsey, warning them to keep a strict watch for the work at the English seaports. Tyndale and Roy made their escape with the printed sheets to Worms, where they probably arrived in October, and made arrangements with the printer Schoeffer for issuing the translation in a different form. Copies were smuggled over into England, and in 1526 they attracted the attention of the clergy (Ellis, Original Letters, ii. 74, 77). In spite of a plea for toleration from Wolsey, a conclave of bishops resolved that the book should be burned, and Tunstall, after denouncing it from St. Paul's Cross on 24 Oct., issued an injunction directing all who possessed copies to give them up under pain of excommunication. A similar mandate was issued on 3 Nov. by William Warham [q. v.], archbishop of Canterbury, who himself also bought up copies of Tyndale's translation on the continent in order to destroy them (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, iv. No. 2607; Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd ser. ii. 86). About the close of 1526 it became known that Tyndale was concerned in the translation. Early in 1528, on the arrest of Thomas Garrett at Oxford, the agency for distributing the testaments was discovered; and Wolsey, uneasy at the large sale of the book and stung by Roy's satire, ‘Rede me and be nott wrothe,’ which he attributed to Tyndale, took measures for seizing the translator at Worms. Tyndale, however, had warning, and took refuge at Marburg, where he enjoyed the protection of Philip the Magnanimous, landgrave of Hesse, and the friendship of Hermann Buschius, professor of poetry and eloquence at the university. At Marburg he probably met Patrick Hamilton [q. v.], the Scottish proto-martyr, and later he was joined there by John Frith. Hitherto Tyndale had preserved his belief in transubstantiation, but between 1528 and 1530, through the persuasions of Robert Barnes [q. v.], he adopted the views of Zuinglius, the most advanced of the reformers. Rejecting not merely Luther's doctrine of consubstantiation but even Calvin's theory of a spiritual presence in the sacrament, he regarded the celebration of the Lord's supper simply as a commemorative service.

On 8 May 1528 appeared Tyndale's ‘Parable of the Wicked Mammon,’ printed at Marburg by Hans Luft in octavo, of which a copy is preserved in the British Museum. The quarto copy in the same library, bearing the same date, was in reality printed in London about 1550. Another edition was printed ‘for James Nycolson, Southwark,’ in 1536. It was more than once reprinted in London in the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth. An edition was issued in 1842 (London, 8vo). The work is an exposition of the parable of the unjust steward, treats chiefly of the doctrine of justification by faith, and contains also passages on property strongly controverting the idea of a right of absolute ownership apart from social obligations. These opinions did not prevent Sir Thomas More from styling it ‘a very treasury and well-spring of wickedness.’ On 2 Oct. 1528 was issued Tyndale's most important original work, ‘The Obediẽce of a Christen man, and how Christẽ rulers ought to governe,’