1526—1528
London, England

The Fires of
St. Paul’s Cross

When a thing speedeth not well, we borrow speech, and say, ‘The bishop hath blessed it;’ because that nothing speedeth well that they meddle withal. If the porridge be burned too, or the meat over roasted, we say, ‘The bishop hath put his foot in the pot,’ or, ‘The bishop hath played the cook;’ because the bishops burn whom they lust, and whosoever displeaseth them.

—William Tyndale, The Four Senses of Scripture

“Pestiferous and Most Pernicious Poison”

On October 24, 1526, Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall, once the object of Tyndale’s hopes, issued the following decree:
     “By the duty of our pastoral office we are bound diligently, with all our power, to foresee, provide for, root out, and put away, all those things which seem to tend to the peril and danger of our subjects, and specially the destruction of their souls! Wherefore, we having understanding, by the report of divers credible persons, and also by the evident appearance of the matter, that many children of iniquity . . . blinded through extreme wickedness, wandering from the way of truth and the Catholic faith, craftily have translated the New Testament into our English tongue, intermingling therewith many heretical articles and erroneous opinions, pernicious and offensive, seducing the simple people . . . containing, in the English tongue, that pestiferous and most pernicious poison, dispersed throughout all our diocese in great number.”¹

Tunstall then ordered that all biblical contraband be turned over for burning. He summoned London’s booksellers, warning them not to bring into England any more heretical writings, and he charged the church’s archdeacons to gather and turn in all such books within thirty days. In light of English hunger for Jesus’ words in the mother tongue, the bishop’s decree served more as an advertisement. Its sharp language indicates that only months after its completion, Tyndale’s work was spreading rapidly throughout London. This was indeed distressing to the authorities, for where would it stop? On November 3, William Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, issued his own prohibition of Tyndale’s New Testaments. Tunstall and his allies, including Thomas More and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, with Henry’s backing, were determined to meet the fire of the word with the fires of St. Paul.

Tunstall was a humanist thinker, a scholar of Greek, a friend of Erasmus, but he was so blinded by the gnats of his own prejudice that he could not see the camels of brilliance in Tyndale’s work. Tunstall claimed the new translation had more than three thousand errors, and More insisted it had as many faults as the sea had shells. As the fate of history worked its ironic twists, within a few short years Tunstall would openly verify the greatness of Tyndale’s work. At present, however, he failed to understand as pastor to his people the need to satisfy the hunger of a famished nation for a New Testament feast. The people felt the pangs of Amos’s “famine in the land . . . of hearing the words of the Lord” and were running “to and fro to seek the word of the Lord” (Amos 8:11—12).

Tyndale penned a beautiful passage on the purpose of scripture. How different in spirit it reads from Tunstall’s order, but how similar in spirit it reads to Lehi’s description of the iron rod. “The
scripture is that wherewith God draweth us unto him. . . . The scriptures spring out of God, and flow unto Christ, and were given to lead us to Christ. Thou must therefore go along by the scripture
as by a line, until thou come at Christ, which is the way’s end and resting place.”²

Circling the Fire

As early as February and March 1526, the first trickle of Tyndale’s New Testaments had arrived and were selling in London. Care was needed to transport them from Worms to the shipping ports, with most of them departing from Antwerp for their journey across the English Channel. Roads were muddy, often impassable and unsafe. Searches and seizures occurred frequently. In the future, as publishing in city ports became less dangerous than overland transport or long river journeys from the interior, publications would be printed, hidden, and shipped from the same port city.

The religious atmosphere in England was already tense by October, when Tyndale’s New Testaments were readily available. At Cambridge, Robert Barnes found himself in hot water over a sermon he had delivered the previous Christmas. He was summoned to London to appear before Cardinal Wolsey. Miles Coverdale, his good friend, courageously came with him. Given the choice between recanting and burning, he chose recantation but was sentenced with four German merchants of the London Steelyard to public humiliation.

On February 11, 1526, Barnes and the four merchants were ordered to carry the heretic’s bundle of sticks on their backs while kneeling in the aisle of St. Paul’s Cathedral as Bishop John Fisher delivered a brimstone sermon against them. Afterward, they stepped outside to St. Paul’s Cross, where a huge bonfire was ignited. Attended by thousands and presided over by Cardinal Wolsey, who was seated upon a high scaffold surrounded by bishops, abbots, and priors, the offending men had to circle the fire three times and then throw their bundles of sticks into the flames. It was a warning that only the mercy of the church had saved them from being thrown into the fire themselves. If they were caught again with an English New Testament, the chains of the stake would encircle them. But the desire to teach was strong. How could men like Barnes stop themselves?

Great piles of forbidden books, particularly Luther’s writings—some of which had been confiscated in Sir Thomas More’s surprise search of the Steelyard in January 1526—were sacrificed to the flames, but an even more “pestiferous and most pernicious” enemy was sailing to England, concealed in the holds of ships. All the power of church and state mustered against this new foe would not be able to stop it.

As the months ticked by, New Testaments began arriving at alarming rates. Henry VIII entered the fray in 1527, writing, “We . . . with the deliberate advice of the most reverend fathers of the spirituality, have determined the said and untrue translations to be burned, with further sharp correction and punishment against the keepers and readers of the same.”³ The crimes of reading and keeping Bibles would be strictly enforced, resulting in “sharp correction and punishment” by order of his majesty.

As a result of Tunstall’s and Warham’s decrees, great numbers of Tyndale’s New Testaments were publicly burned at St. Paul’s Cross in the fall of 1526. Humphrey Monmouth, a personal friend and supporter of Tyndale, painfully witnessed the burning. Cardinal Campeggio, the papal representative, felt differently and wrote to Rome of this first public condemnation of Tyndale’s translation, declaring that “no holocaust could be more pleasing to Almighty God.”⁴

Wily Traders and Clandestine Meetings

Despite public conflagrations, desire continued for the New Testament’s precious words and the profits that could be made by daring merchants and booksellers. The small pocket-sized octavo edition was easy to conceal, and sales increased. A wily trader could buy the books at the fairs of Frankfurt, Germany, or directly from the printer, knowing that a ready market waited if he could slip them past the ever-watchful eyes of Catholic sympathizers.

Almost every ship sailing between Antwerp and England contained some form of contraband. Smugglers landed their wares in dozens of inlets and tributaries along England’s extended coastline. To reduce risks, they then used footpaths and muddy back roads. Under King Henry’s edicts, informers received large portions of the fines levied on those arrested. Spies on both sides of the law were common, and bribes induced community authorities to look the other way. New Testaments were reportedly sold in Coleman Street, Honey Lane, Hosier Lane, and in the private house of one Simon Fish. And, of course, there was always the narrow back alley or wayside path.

Tyndale hoped to keep the price of his Bibles affordable for the working classes, yet profits often reached as high as 500 percent. Even then, cost of the books was well within the reach of the majority of Henry’s subjects.

With doors locked and lookouts posted, small groups of people gathered in clandestine meetings in the dead of night while one of their number read forbidden words in quiet tones. Families purchased the books, and parents softly taught their children from the smuggled texts. Wolsey, Tunstall, and More began serious surveillance, setting snares to catch the fishermen, tailors, and woolen merchants of London.

“We read, for example, of Thomas Geffrey, tailor; of John Medwall, a scrivener’s servant; of Mathew Ward, a merchant adventurer; and of Robert Ward, a shoemaker by Fleet Street; all of whom were arrested and forced to recant their heretical beliefs.”⁵ Persecution was not limited to men. “All eight members of a family called Wily were arrested, including ‘Lucy Wily, and Agnes Wily, two young girls.’”⁶

Oxford saw its share of arrests. After Thomas Garrett was caught slipping 350 books into the university, he was hauled before Cardinal Wolsey. He and several of his supporters were then thrown into a makeshift prison, where three of them died. Bonfires lit the streets of Oxford, and the procession of stick-carrying offenders grew.

Despite his recent memory of the heat from the bonfire’s flames, Robert Barnes, who was under house arrest in an Augustinian friary, sold one of Tyndale’s New Testaments to a group of Lollards for three shillings and two pence.⁷ He then faked his suicide with a series of notes that sent his jailors to his supposed drowning spot while he escaped across the English Channel. Back in London, Humphrey Monmouth’s house was searched as part of an official effort to ferret out members of the Christian Brethren.

Tunstall’s humanity, however, restrained him. He was not a bishop who favored burning people alive, and so far punishment was limited to imprisonment, public carrying of bundles of sticks, and days in the stocks. But the punishment proved insufficient to deter the blacksmiths, farmers, weavers, and fullers from making their purchases. Sometimes several pooled their money to buy a single New Testament. So while the printers on the Continent set the type, inked it, and pressed prized words onto a waiting rag paper, the secret meetings continued.

The Battlefront Shifts to the Continent

Demand grew so high that in Antwerp pirated editions of Tyndale’s work began to appear. They were often poorly done because the printers rarely spoke or read the English they were typesetting, but the New Testaments sold just as handsomely. Luther once complained that he could not recognize his own works when the publishing pirates had finished with them.

On November 21, 1526, Wolsey instructed the English ambassador to the Low Countries,⁸ John Hackett, to take the war to the Continent and stop the flow at its source. Christopher van Endhoven, a printer of pirated copies, was caught with freshly printed Bibles and arrested. To Hackett’s frustration, however,
leaders in Antwerp had no mind to quickly punish the printer or burn his books. But books bought by Wolsey’s agents were burned across the Channel and eventually in Antwerp as well. For protection, printers produced pirated and official editions under false names and locations. This practice became Tyndale’s prime mode of operation.

In June 1528, Cardinal Wolsey demanded that the regent of the Low Countries arrest and extradite Tyndale, Roye, and Richard Herman, an English merchant. Roye and Tyndale had already
separated, and neither could be found. Herman, a citizen of Antwerp, was arrested and accused of helping Tyndale. His trial dragged on, but he was released at last because of a lack of evidence. He was expelled from the English House,⁹ and his business was ruined. His cause was taken up later by no less than Anne Boleyn, who requested his reinstatement.

Other searchers were sent to Holland to purchase information concerning Tyndale’s whereabouts. Back in England, More was busily asking for clues about his dress, habits, and appearance.

The Chief Buyer of Bibles

Authorities concocted a plan to buy all of the editions firsthand and have them destroyed. The plan, however, was not well thought out and only served to encourage more printing. Foxe recorded an intriguing conversation regarding Bishop Tunstall’s purchase of large quantities of New Testaments for burning:

“In short space after, it fortuned that George Constantine was apprehended by Sir Thomas More, who was then chancellor of England, as suspected of certain heresies. Master More asked of him, saying, ‘Constantine! I would have thee be plain with me in one thing that I will ask; and I promise thee I will show thee favor in
all other things whereof thou art accused. There is beyond the sea, Tyndale, Roye, and a great many of you: I know they cannot
live without help. There are some that succor them with money;
and thou, being one of them, hadst thy part thereof, and therefore knowest whence it came. I pray thee, tell me, who be they that
help them thus?’ ‘My Lord,’ quoth Constantine, ‘I will tell you
truly: it is the bishop of London that hath holpen us, for he hath bestowed among us a great deal of money upon New Testaments
to burn them; and that hath been, and yet is, our only succor
and comfort.’ ‘Now by my troth,’ quoth More, ‘I think even
the same; for so much I told the bishop before he went
about it.’”¹⁰

Despite Constantine’s cavalier attitude, he cracked under More’s interrogation. He had been caught distributing Tyndale’s books in England, and he now revealed names of those involved in smuggling, including the sailors and secret marks placed on shipments concealing New Testaments. Arrests promptly followed, and the reformers received a timely lesson about the type of men they could take into their confidence.

In a letter drafted October 4, 1528, Hermann Rinck, the Cologne official who chased Tyndale up the Rhine to Worms, wrote to Cardinal Wolsey, reporting on his efforts to intercept English works bound for Britain and revealing smuggling techniques. “Unless I had learned of the matter and had interposed, the books were to have been bound and concealed in paper covers, packed in ten bundles, covered with flax, and at a suitable opportunity craftily and without suspicion transported across the sea to Scotland and England, there to be sold merely as blank paper.”¹¹

For about a year and a half, authorities burned books, issued ecclesiastical decrees, and appealed for help to officials on the Continent in an effort to stop Tyndale’s “pernicious poison.” But they were losing the battle, and the poison was spreading—with
the assurance that hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of New Testaments had been distributed in England.

“Everywhere and Nowhere”

Certainly the persecution and book burning distressed Tyndale. He was not translating to warm the clergy’s hands at the bonfires. “Some man will ask,” he wrote, “Why I take the labour to make this work, insomuch as they will burn it, seeing they burnt the gospel? I answer, In burning the new Testament they did none other thing than that I looked for: no more shall they do, if they burn me also, if it be God’s will it shall be so. Nevertheless, in translating the New Testament I did my duty, and so do I now, and will do as much more as God hath ordained me to do.”¹²        

Tyndale’s movements are difficult to trace during this time. Sir Thomas More, after years of fruitless searching, wrote to Erasmus, calling Tyndale “our heretic who is in exile and seems to be everywhere and nowhere.”¹³ Tyndale’s doctrinal treatises The Parable of the Wicked Mammon and The Obedience of a Christian Man,published in 1528, appeared to come from Marburg, Germany. The title pages stated that Hans Luft, a Wittenberg printer of Luther’s works, had printed them in Marburg. But recent research and the examination of woodcuts and type reveal that the true printer was John Hoochstraten, and the printing was done in Antwerp.

Hoochstraten published under a number of pseudonyms, including the rather unimaginative “Adam Anomymous, Basel.”¹⁴ He published enough approved works under his own name to remain legitimate in the public eye and thus cover his printing of lucrative contraband, which became increasingly dangerous. In October 1531, an edict was issued in the Low Countries aimed at suppressing unwelcome publications. A printer could now “be branded with a red hot iron, and lose an eye or a hand at the discretion of the judge.”¹⁵ Hoochstraten was in no mind to be linked with a work that could bring wrath down on his head by foolishly attaching his name to Tyndale’s efforts, but covertly he continued to work with the great reformer.

Antwerp most likely became Tyndale’s central abode from this point on. It had an independent spirit, a well-established community of English merchants, good printers, easy access to English ports, and a nonchalant attitude toward heresy. Business was at the center of Antwerp thoughts. Tyndale was not the last English reformer to find sanctuary there. Miles Coverdale and John Rogers both drew upon the resources and protective attitude of the city. They were close friends of Tyndale and saw his dream to fulfillment after his death.

Undoubtedly, Tyndale moved frequently as the search for him intensified. He returned to Hamburg when the heat was high in Antwerp, but Antwerp was the ideal place both for printing and smuggling. Though German cities offered more safety, Tyndale would risk safety for Antwerp’s amenities.

Force or Failure

The end of 1527 demanded a new, more concerted offensive. Wolsey had Thomas Bilney arrested in Cambridge and delivered him to Bishop Tunstall. Thomas was a diminutive man nicknamed “Little Bilney.” Foxe describes him as “given to good letters; and very fervent and studious in the Scriptures, as appeared in his sermons, his converting of sinners, his preaching at the lazar cots [homes for lepers], wrapping them in sheets, helping them of that they wanted . . . a preacher to the prisoners and comfortless; a great doer in Cambridge.”¹⁶

Bilney was seen as a significant force in the new spirit of the times, but Tunstall was convinced he was heretical. He was placed in the Tower of London for a year, where he recanted twice before being released. Slowly, Tunstall was finding the clues he needed to break the secrecy surrounding the importation of the contraband books. By the end of 1528, his prisons bulged with offenders like Edward Freese, a painter who was imprisoned for painting scripture verses on cloth for an inn.¹⁷ It became clear that more strident measures were demanded to deter such heretics. Without greater force, the battle would fail. And so the clouds in England turned black with storm, and lightning fell to enkindle the fires of Smithfield.

Notes

^1. Bobrick, Wide As the Waters, 106—7.

^2. Greenslade, Work of William Tindale, 160.

^3. Mozley, William Tyndale, 114.

^4. Ibid., 117.

^5. Ackroyd, Life of Thomas More, 277.

^6. Daniell, William Tyndale, 179.

^7. Ackroyd, Life of Thomas More, 247—48.

^8.  The area bordering on the North Sea, comprising the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

^9. A section of the city set apart for English merchants.

^10. Foxe, Book of Martyrs,180—81.

^11. Mozley, William Tyndale, 131.

^12. Greenslade, Work of William Tindale, 100.

^13. Campbell, Erasmus, Tyndale, and More, 202—3.

^14. Daniell, William Tyndale, 156.

^15. Mozley, William Tyndale, 124 n.

^16. Foxe, Acts and Monuments,4:620.

^17. Ibid., 4:694—95.