For the sake of comparison the following extracts from St Matthew are given, according to the edition of 1539.
(Matthew iii. 1-4.) In those dayes came Iohn the Baptyst, preaching in the wyldernes of Iewry, saying, Repent of the life that is past, for the kyngdome of heauen is at hande, For thys is he, of whom the prophet Esay spake, which sayeth, the voyce of a cryer in the wyldernes, prepare ye the waye of the lorde: make hys pathes strayght. Thys Iohn had hys garment of camels heer And a gyrdell of a skynne aboute hys loynes. His meate was locustes and wylde hony.
(Matthew vi. 9-13.) Oure father which art in heauen, halowed be thy name. Let thy kingdome come. Thy will be fulfilled, as well in erth, as it is in heuen. Geue vs this daye oure dayly bred. And forgeue vs oure dettes, as we forgeue oure detters. And leade vs not into temptation: but delyuer vs from euyll. For thyne is the kyngdom and the power, and the glorye for euer. Amen.
Meanwhile the closing years of Henry VIII.’s reign were characterized by restrictive measures as to the reading and use of the Bible. Tyndale Version was prohibited by an act of parliament, 1543; at the same time it was enacted that all notes and marginal commentaries in other copies should be obliterated, and that “no woman (unless she be a noble or gentle woman), no artificers, apprentices, journeymen, servingmen, under the degree of yeomen ... husbandmen or labourers” should read or use any part of the Bible under pain of fines and imprisonment.[37]
In 1546 Coverdale’s Bible was included in the proscription, the Great Bible being the only translation not interdicted. During Edward VI.’s reign there was a brief respite, but with the accession of Mary the persecutions of the William Whittingham. English Bible and its friends were renewed. Cranmer suffered martyrdom at the stake, as John Rogers had done before him. Other prominent reformers, amongst them Coverdale, sought refuge in Geneva, the town of Calvin and Beza, where they employed their enforced leisure in planning and carrying out a new revision of the Bible. The first fruits of these labours was a New Testament issued in June 1557, with an introduction by Calvin, probably the work of William Whittingham.[38] The volume, in a convenient quarto size, printed in clear Roman type, and provided with marginal annotations, gained immediate popularity in England, where a Bible suited for household demands had long been needed. It was the first Bible which had the text divided into “verses and sections according to the best editions in other languages.”[39]
Whittingham’s enterprise was, however, soon superseded by an issue of the whole Bible, which appeared in 1560, the so-called Genevan Bible, popularly also known as the Breeches Bible, from its rendering of Gen. iii. 7, “They sewed The Genevan Bible. fig leaves together and made themselves breeches.” This edition was mainly due to the combined efforts of William Whittingham, Anthony Gilby and Thomas Sampson, and the expenses towards printing and publication were borne by members of the congregation at Geneva. It represented in the Old Testament a thorough and independent revision of the text of the Great Bible with the help of the Hebrew original, the Latin versions of Leo Judä (1543), Pagninus (1528), Sebastian Münster (1534-1535), and the French versions of Olivetan. The New Testament consisted of Tyndale’s latest text revised to a great extent in accordance with Beza’s translation and commentary. The changes introduced by the Genevan translators were, as a rule, a great improvement, and the version received a ready welcome and immediate popularity, not only on account of its intrinsic merits, but because of its handy size, usually that of a small quarto, and of its being printed, like Whittingham’s New Testament, in a readable Roman type instead of black letter. Like this earlier publication, it had the division of the chapters into verses, and a marginal commentary which proved a great attraction to the Puritans. The popularity of the Genevan Bible was so great that between 1560 and 1644 at least 140 editions of it were published,[40] and this in spite of its not being allowed for use in the churches.
In 1576 the New Testament of the Genevan Bible was again revised by Lawrence Tomson and provided with a new commentary mainly translated from Beza. It soon became popular and even replaced the Genevan New Testament in later editions of this Bible.
Some time after the accession of Queen Elizabeth an attempt was made to improve the authorized Great Bible, and in this way to challenge the ever growing popularity of the Calvinistic Genevan Bible. The initiative was taken The Bishops’ Bible. by Archbishop Parker, about 1563-1565, who, according to Strype (Parker i. 414) “took upon him the labour to contrive and set the whole work a going ... by sorting out the whole Bible into parcels ... and distributing these parcels to able bishops and other learned men, to peruse and collate each the book or books allotted them ... and they to add some short marginal notes for the illustration or correction of the text.”
The rules upon which they proceeded were these:—
1. “To follow the common English translation used in the churches, and not to recede from it, but where it varieth manifestly from the Hebrew or Greek original. 2. To use sections and divisions in the text as Pagnine in his translation useth, and for the verity of the Hebrew to follow the said Pagnine and Münster specially, and generally others learned in the tongues. 3. To make no bitter notes upon any text, or yet to set down any determination in places of controversy. 4. To note such chapters and places as contain matters of genealogies, or other such places not edifying, with some strike or note, that the reader may eschew them in his public reading. 5. That all such words as sound in the old translation to any offence of lightness or obscenity be expressed with more convenient terms and phrases.”