CONTENTS

Page
Introduction[xvii]
Conditions in England[1]
The Making of Tindale[11]
At Little Sodbury[15]
In London[19]
In Exile (1) Intercourse with Luther[24]
In Exile (2) Translating the New Test.[29]
Personality[46]
Conclusion[50]

ILLUSTRATIONS

Tindale Memorial Window in Bible House LondonFrontispiece
Facing Page
William Tindale. Drawn by I. H. Lynch from an old portrait by Pass[xiii]
Erasmus: 1526, after Dürer[2]
Printing Press, 1511. The earliest known representation of a Printing Press, from the title page of Hegesippus' Hist. de Bello Judaico, printed by Jodocus Badius Ascensius, Paris 1511[30]
[1]Page of Octavo New Testament, 1525[33]
[1]Page of Octavo New Testament, Revised, 1534-6[36]
[1]Facsimile of the only known letter of Tindale[48]
Tindale's Monument at North Nibley, near Little Sodbury[50]

[1] By kind permission of the Religious Tract Society.

INTRODUCTION

"THE first scholar and the first divine of his epoch"—the words stand true of William Tindale; but his personality is even more arresting, for only a man richly endowed with courage, sincerity, uprightness, the sense of duty and the love of country, could have served England so nobly as he did: yet England knows not the man.

Fifteen years, or sixteen at most, early in the Sixteenth Century, 1520-1536, enclose the immemorial labors of William Tindale. During that decade and a half there were for him experiences and enterprises which went to the making of the man, and show what manner of man he was: but which also set him forth as one of the greatest of his race.

Formative years preceded these; some thirty of them one conjectures; of which, however, we can discover little. We get glimpses of him and his doings; but they are like flashes of lightning in a dark sky. A narrative of this man's life would seem forever impossible: what letters there were, or other documents, disappeared long ago: and the path he trod with unfaltering step we can trace in patches only.