Thomas More and William Tyndale: Servants of God, Martyrs to Conscience, Mutual Enemies

I pray you let me lay my beard over the block, lest you should cut it.

Sir Thomas More

 Lord!  Open the king of England’s eyes.

William Tyndale

       

The two quotations given above are the reported final words of two great men of the sixteenth century: Sir (now St.) Thomas More and William Tyndale.  Each man sought to serve God with his whole heart, and each died a martyr to conscience.  Their final words reflect their differing temperaments: Tyndale always deadly earnest; More ever jesting, even on the gallows with the axman about to cleave his neck.  However, it was not their differences in temperament, but a much deeper theological divide that, in 1528, less than ten years before the death of both men in 1535-36, would lead them to collide head-on in a vicious war of words, ostensibly over Tyndale’s attempt to put the entire Bible into clear idiomatic English for the first time.     

            The story begins with Tyndale’s bold decision to translate the Holy Scriptures into English, but it has a preface in his education.  Tyndale studied at Oxford from ca. 1506 to 1515, receiving both BA and MA degrees from that university’s Magdalen Hall (Daniell 22).  He then most likely spent some time at the younger Cambridge University (49-54).  Whether at one university or the other, or both, Tyndale gained great proficiency in the Greek language; so great, that when he later sought support from the Bishop of London for his project of translating the New Testament, he brought with him as an example of his translating skill a rendering into English he had done of the rather difficult Greek orator Isocrates (47-48; cf. Tyndale “W.T. to the Reader” 5).   

            Tyndale’s decision to translate appears to have grown out of the disputes he had with local members of the clergy while working as a tutor in Gloucestershire.  These disputes grew eventually into trouble for Tyndale, with some accusations of heresy (Daniell 74-79).  The moment of decision is said to have come in an exchange recorded by Tyndale’s earliest biographer, John Fox:

Not long after, Master Tyndale happened to be in the company of a certain divine, recounted for a learned man, and in communing and disputing with him, he drove him to that issue [the question of the authority of the pope], that the said great doctor burst out into these blasphemous words, “We were better to be without God’s laws than the pope’s.”  Master Tyndale, hearing this, full of godly zeal, and not bearing the blasphemous saying, replied, “I defy the pope and all his laws;” and added, “if God spared him [sic] life, ere many years he would cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the scripture than he [sic] did.” (Fox 178)

This is presented as the event that decided Tyndale in his resolve to translate the entire Bible into English.  His final words in the passage rival only his final words at the stake as his most famous statement.

            As noted already, Tyndale, determined to translate the Scriptures, went first to the bishop of London, one Cuthbert Tunstall (the year was 1523; Mozley Coverdale 29).  At the time, going to the Bishop was necessary, for printing an English Bible was only legal with an episcopal license (Duffy 80).  He tells us that he found help neither there, nor anywhere else in London, and, deciding he would have to leave England itself to complete his work, he went to the continent (Tyndale “W.T. to the Reader” 5).  In spite of certain difficulties, he was able to complete a translation of the New Testament and publish it in 1525/26 (Daniell 134).  His was not the first English version of the New Testament, but it was the first printed version, as well as the first to have been translated from the original Greek (Ferguson 132).

            Within two years of completing his English New Testament, in the midst of studying to master Hebrew and beginning work on an English version of the Old Testament, Tyndale began writing polemical pamphlets in which he attacked Catholicism and promoted the new Lutheran interpretations of such matters as the relationship of works and faith to salvation.  The first of these was The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, published 8 May 1528 (Daniell 155ff.).  Another, The Obedience of a Christian Man, came out 2 October that same year (Daniell Introduction Obedience viii; cf. Tyndale Obedience).  It was shortly after this (Pineas dates the letter involved 7 March 1528; Thomas More and Tudor Polemics 39) that Bishop Tunstall, who had earlier rejected Tyndale’s offer of an English Bible, recruited Sir Thomas More to write in response to Tyndale’s works.  As Brian Edwards observes on this point, “It was a mark of the effectiveness of Tyndale’s work that the greatest literary man in England should be urged to write against him” (Edwards 125-26).

            By 1528, More was one of the leading men of England.  Tutored in Greek by William Grocyn; educated at Oxford, New Inn, and Lincoln’s Inn; he had been knighted in 1521; he became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1525; and by the year following Tunstall’s request (1529), would be Lord Chancellor (Lewis 165 n.1).  He was also already well experienced and well known as a humanist and a writer: the dedicatee of Erasmus of Rotterdam’s In Praise of Folly in 1511 (Marius 88-90), he had himself published his Utopia in 1517 (Powell and Cook 151), and had both aided King Henry VIII in the monarch’s writing of Assertio Septum Sacramentorum against Luther, and written against Luther himself in 1523 (Anderson 341; Greene and Dolan).  

It is in that year—1528—that a series of events began to unfold that would within eight years see More executed as a traitor to the crown, Tyndale burned at the stake as a heretic, England broken from the unity of Christendom, and the publication of the first complete and authorized English Bible.  First, More composed “A Dialogue Concerning Heresies” in 1529, aimed not just at Tyndale, but also at Luther and “heretics” in general (Zagorin 69).  Tyndale then reposted in An Answer unto Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue in 1531, having printed in the meantime his translation of the Pentateuch in 1530 (Daniell 269ff; cf. Tyndale Pentateuch).  The following year, More came back with his lengthy Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, which came out in two installments (Daniell 269ff.)  Also, in May of 1532, More resigned as Lord Chancellor in protest against Henry VIII’s attempts to obtain an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (Marius 415ff.; cf. Belloc How the Reformation Happened 55-75).  In 1534 Tyndale produced a new edition of his New Testament (cf. Tyndale New Testament).  By 1536, Tyndale’s persistent translating and pamphleteering, and More’s refusal to abandon—as one biographer has it—“Papal Supremacy” (Belloc Characters 66-67), had cost both men their lives…  

            It all began with Tyndale and his tracts.

            How did it happen?  Tyndale is usually presented as having died for having the audacity to put the Bible into the English language.  Everett Ferguson explains the circumstances in which Tyndale was working:

Since the time of Wycliffe the bishops in England had forbade the making and reading of English versions without episcopal license.  The spreading Lutheran movement made the clergy wary again and unreceptive to the idea of an English translation. (Ferguson 132)

However, one can see from Ferguson’s own statement, with its qualifying phrases, that this was not a simple case of pure opposition to the idea of an English Bible.  English versions are only forbidden without episcopal license (which Tyndale did not have); and such wariness grew out of the events surrounding the Lollards and was increased by the agitations of Lutheranism (tendencies of which Tyndale clearly demonstrated).  Furthermore, such restrictions were limited to England, which was the only European nation without a vernacular Bible (King 53; cf. Daniell 92ff.). 

On account of this last point, Thomas More, fierce opponent of the translator Tyndale, has been accused of being “out of step” with the times (King 53); but being “out of step” is hardly a proper characterization of so protean an individual as Thomas More; and to say Tyndale was opposed because he wanted to make an English Bible is simplistic (for a good example of this sort of simplistic historiography, cf. Brian Moynahan, God’s Bestseller). 

More actually favored the idea of an English version of the Bible (Duffy 80), but intensely opposed heresy and heretical versions (Zagorin 326 n.45).  By the time More was recruited to write against Tyndale, the latter had already published the two major essays noted above, which together clearly present him not as a man merely wishing to provide the Bible in English, but as a believer after the general fashion of Luther on several points (cf. Tyndale Obedience 75-76, 108-29).  It was for this reason primarily that More confronted Tyndale, with the translation getting tangled up in the discussion.

            We must not make the mistake of painting with too broad a brush here.  Although More and Tyndale (as we shall see presently) differed on many points and in many ways, they were far more similar than some—Moynahan, for example—would have us believe.  In his study English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama, C.S. Lewis describes these points of similarity:

They must not, except in theology, be contrasted as the representatives respectively of an old and new order.  Intellectually they both belonged to the new: both were Grecians [i.e. Greek scholars] (Tyndale a Hebraist as well) and both were arrogantly, perhaps ignorantly contemptuous of the Middle Ages.  And if the view be accepted (it is said to be very doubtful) that a feudal world was at this time being replaced by something harsher in the social and economic sphere, then More and Tyndale both belonged to the old.  Both inveighed against enclosure and sheep-farming and demanded that the desires of the “economic man” should be completely subordinated to traditional Christian ethics.  Both disapproved of the annulment of the king’s marriage…Nor is it, perhaps, irrelevant to add that they were alike in their fate; even curiously alike, since both risked death by torture and both were mercifully disappointed, for More was only beheaded (not disemboweled alive) and they strangled Tyndale at the stake before they lit the fire. (164-65)

            One more point of similarity worth mentioning is the fact already noted that More—contrary to the portrait often painted of him—did indeed want vernacular versions of the Bible.  Yet, in spite of these basic similarities, the men were poles apart on two very important points: temperament and theology—two qualities which cannot here be separated. 

More was not only Catholic in religion, but catholic in all things.  Catholicism here means that sort of broad mind that, in its English manifestation, gave us both Geoffrey Chaucer and the English mystery plays, with their seemingly odd mixture of high and low, sacred and profane.  James J. Greene describes this breadth of mind as the source of More’s comic vision, “a vision which can only express itself through a superb irony” (Greene 13).  The same author has described More as:

The canonized saint who wrote bawdy epigrams; the loyal servant and friend of the king who translated politically subversive poems; the amasser of substantial real-estate holdings who described private property as the source of all political and social ills; the thinker who examined the attractiveness of religious tolerance and who also advocated the burning of heretics; the congenial lover of life who beneath his chancellor’s robes wore a hair shirt; the model family man who wrote a treatise defending the common ownership of wives (Greene 16).

In contrast to More, Tyndale had the crabbed, Puritan mindset that, released in the years leading up to and following his death, would end the tradition of the Mystery plays, causing most to be lost; and, 106 years after his death, would close every theatre in England, rupturing the English theatrical tradition irreparably.  His Puritan earnestness is seen in various places, primarily in the fact that, in contrast to More’s employment of the dialogue form in his first attack on Tyndale (Pineas “Thomas More’s use of Dialogue Form”) and his extensive use of humor therein (Pineas “Thomas More’s Use of Humor”), Tyndale prefers the more vituperative techniques of sarcasm, and what a modern would refer to as “unintentional” Freudian slips, such as the substitution of “destructions” for “instructions” and “vanities” for “verities” (Pineas “William Tyndale: Controversialist” 119-21).    

            Another manifestation of this difference between the broad mind of More and the crabbed thinking of Tyndale is in the matter of philosophy.  More’s attitude towards philosophy, and the classical learning that, in his mind, went with it hand-in-hand, is seen in the following passage, which he addressed to the Vice-Chancellor, Proctors, and Faculty of Oxford in 1518:

No one has ever claimed that a man needed Greek and Latin, or indeed any education, in order to be saved.  Still this education which he [Erasmus?] calls secular does train the soul in virtue…There are some who through knowledge of things natural construct a ladder by which to rise to the contemplation of things supernatural; they build a path to Theology through Philosophy and the Liberal Arts…; they adorn the Queen of Heaven with the spoils of the Egyptians…I don’t see how [Theology can be studied] without some knowledge of languages, whether Hebrew or Greek or Latin…The New Testament is in Greek…not half of Greek learning has yet been made available to the West; and, however good the translations have been, the text of the original still remains a surer and more convincing presentation.  (qtd. In Harbison 88-89).

Tyndale, in contrast, despite his knowledge of Greek and his skill at translating it, railed against the application of “Man’s wisdom [which is] plain idolatry” to the matter of theology, for “neither is there any other idolatry than to imagine of God after man’s wisdom” (Tyndale Obedience 24; cf. 20-25).

            Furthermore, in spite of his awe-inspiring grasp of all three languages with which he worked, and the beauty and felicity of his translation which is obvious to anyone who has an opportunity to read him, Tyndale manifested at certain points an interpretive pedantry.  One manifestation of this was his emphasis on the literal sense of scripture, over against the three other traditional senses, which he calls the allegorical, the tropological and the anagogical (Tyndale Obedience156); the second is more familiar as the “moral” sense, as in Dante’s exposition of these points (Alighieri).  Tyndale says of the literal sense:

Thou shalt understand therefore that the scripture hath but one sense which is the literal sense.  And that literal sense is the root and ground of all, and the anchor that never faileth whereunto if thou cleave thou canst never err or go out of the way.  And if thou leave the literal sense thou canst not but go out of the way. (Obedience 156; emphasis added; cf. Ginsberg 49)  

Nearly all that Tyndale says here is true, and serves as a good caution against overly allegorical interpretation (cf. Tyndale “Aprologue” 11).  The problem occurs in the final line, where Tyndale seems to equate all senses beyond the merely literal with error.  It is this narrowness and lack of judiciousness that causes much of Tyndale’s trouble.  Another place where Tyndale’s pedantry manifests is in some of his choices of terminology in his translation.  It is in examining this that we can enter more deeply into the actual discussion between these two great men, Tyndale and More.

              It were too long an endeavor to examine each of the three documents involved in the conflict between these two men.  Thankfully, that is largely unnecessary, since in his Confutation, More deals with matters at such length, giving us in the process the essence of Tyndale’s own argument, that this document alone will suffice for an examination of the case.  It should allow us to see the ways in which these two men differed, and what the nature of their conflict was.

James Hitchcock observes that the most fundamental differences between More and Tyndale are over “the nature of revelation and the status of the Bible” (449).  He observes that at the heart of More’s argument lies an appeal to the Vincentian canon: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ad omnibus creditum est—what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all (Hitchcock 451).  On the other hand, Tyndale insists on rejecting that which he does not find clearly stated in Scripture (cf. e.g. More Confutation 85).  This, of course, is the classic Catholic/Protestant divide.  However, we can get a better sense of the nature of More’s objection to Tyndale by looking at how he treats one aspect of Tyndale’s translation: his translation of ekklesia as “congregation” rather than “church” (164-77).  While More goes on at great length about this point, the greatest understanding can be gained by looking at how he deals with an objection Tyndale had made in his Answer to More.  This is best appreciated by reading More’s own words in the Confutation, which are quoted here at great length and without ellipsis (the spelling has been modernized by this author for the sake of clarity):

Then he asketh me why I have not contended with Erasmus whom he calleth my darling, of all this long while for translating of this word ecclesia into this word congregatio.  And then he cometh forth with his fete proper taunt, that I favor him of likelihood for making of his book of Moria [i.e. Encomium Moriae, In Praise of Folly] in my house.  There had he hit me low save for lack of a little salt.  I have not contended with Erasmus my darling, because I found no such malicious intent [here we remember that More was a lawyer] with Erasmus my darling as I find with Tyndale.  For had I found with Erasmus my darling the shrewd intent and purpose that I find in Tyndale: Erasmus my darling should be no more my darling.  But I find in Erasmus my darling that he detesteth and abhoreth the errors and heresies that Tyndale plainly teacheth and abideth by and therefore Erasmus my darling shall be my dear darling still.  And surely if Tyndale had either never taught them, or yet had the grace to revoke them: then should Tyndale be my dear darling too.  But while he holdeth such heresies still I cannot take for my darling him that the devil taketh for his darling.

Now for his translation of ecclesia by congregatio his deed is nothing like Tyndale’s.  For the Latin tongue had no Latin word before used for the church, but the Greek word ecclesia[;] therefore Erasmus in his new translation gave it a Latin word.  But we in English had a proper English word therefore and therefore was no such cause for Tyndale to change it into a worse.  Erasmus also meant none heresy therein as appeareth by his writing against heretics but Tyndale intended nothing else thereby as appeareth by the heresies that [he] himself teacheth and abideth by.  And therefore was there in this matter no cause for me to contend with Erasmus, as there was to contend with Tyndale with whom I contend for putting in congregation instead of church[;] except yet Tyndale peradventure meaneth that I should have been angry with Erasmus because that instead of congregation in his Latin translation, he had not put in our English word church. (177-78)   

            From this (relatively) brief quotation, More’s prolixity is obvious (imagine 1034 pages of this).  However, one can see from this the nature of More’s objection.  It is characteristically subtle, and thus was no doubt lost on Tyndale (or would have been had he read it, which he almost certainly did not).  More does not object to the translation of the Scriptures, nor even to the literal translation of ekklesia; rather, he objects to Tyndale’s tendentious translation of said word as “congregation” for the purpose of furthering his anti-clerical agenda (for a good look at how this agenda shaped Tyndale’s writing on church history, notably his abuse of the very word “clergy,” see Pineas “William Tyndale’s Use of History as a Weapon of Religious Controversy”).  Tyndale commits the etymological fallacy of thinking that the root meaning of a word is its “real” meaning (this is entirely consistent with his eschewing of all but the literal sense).  More points out that Erasmus uses the word congregatio to translate ekklesia because his only other choice was to leave the word wholly untranslated, as it had been in the Vulgate (on this point, we must remember that Erasmus’ Latin version was published together with his edition of the Greek New Testament, and thus was intended partly as a crib; in such a case, translating ekklesia literally as “congregation” makes perfect sense).

            At the very least, one can make the following judgment about More’s opposition to Tyndale: More did not oppose the translation of the Bible into English (one wonders what he would have thought of Matthew’s Bible, had he lived to see it); he did, however, oppose Tyndale, whom he saw as, first and foremost, a heretic trying to spread a pernicious corruption of the truth and undermine the Church.  In More’s mind, Tyndale’s translation was, like his tracts, just one more way to spread his ideas, this time making it appear that they had the support of Scripture itself.  Is it any wonder that More wanted Tyndale stopped? 

The End: Two Martyrs

After More’s massive effort to refute Tyndale and all heretics once and for all, the exchange, so far as there had ever been one, ended.  Tyndale had not been as passionate about refuting More as More had been about refuting him, and he no doubt had better things to do.  Already, the clouds were gathering for both men.  On May 16, 1532, the day after the clergy of England submitted to King Henry’s authority, More had resigned his position as Lord Chancellor, an action he had not been allowed to take until such time.  After More, the power of the position dwindled as that of the Monarch and men like Thomas Cromwell waxed greater (Marius 407-17).  Although he had begun it before his resignation, More only completed his Confutation afterwards, and it reads like one man’s last desperate attempt to prove himself right, and on the right side.

Finally came the oath of succession, declaring that the child to be born to King Henry and Anne Boleyn would be the legitimate heir to the throne.  All were required to swear thereto…but More could not.  While he said he would condemn no one who did take the oath, he could not in good conscience do so himself.  His objection was only to certain parts of the preamble, and though Archbishop Cranmer requested that More and his fellow conscientious objector Bishop John Fisher be allowed to take a modified oath, Henry rejected the idea (Ridley 72-76).

So, on April 17, 1534, Sir Thomas More was committed to the Tower of London to await trial (Marius 464).  While in prison, he was still able to write, and among the works he composed was A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation.  Here, More seems to have recovered from whatever loss of literary power had marred his last book against Tyndale, for the Dialogue is considered one of his greatest compositions (471-72; cf. More Dialogue).  More remained in the Tower for over a year awaiting trial, but after the trial, his execution was swift.  He was beheaded on Tuesday, July 6, 1535.  A Pamphlet called the “Paris News Letter” recorded that More said he died the king’s good servant but God’s first (Marius 512-14).

   In May of that year, just days before More’s trial, William Tyndale was betrayed and arrested in Brussels, Belgium “on or near 21 May”; he was imprisoned in Vilvorde castle, six miles to the north (Daniell 364).  He remained there for over a year (Daniell gives the very precise figure of 450 days) before being “formally condemned as a heretic” (Daniell 374).  Still it was not until early October (the sixth, according to Anglican tradition) that William Tyndale was executed: tied to a stake, strangled, and his body burned (382-83).

Epilogue: Beyond the End

Each of these men had a great impact on the world after his death.  More was eventually canonized as a Catholic saint on 10 February 1935, just shy of the 400^th anniversary of his martyrdom (Sylvester).  In a more secular vein, he has continued to be one of the great figures of 16^th-century literature, although his writings against Tyndale are usually not considered among his most valuable contributions.  If for nothing else, he is remembered for his authorship of Utopia, which gave the world a new word and, in some ways, a new concept.

Tyndale’s literary influence is in ways even greater, for he is the author of the English Bible in its essence.  Within 11 months of Tyndale’s death, “[the] crown [had] authorized the publication of the vernacular Bible” (Hecht 825).  In 1536—the very year of Tyndale’s death—Miles Coverdale printed a complete English Bible which was “authorized for use in England” (Dawley; cf. Daniell 334).  Both the New Testament and the Pentateuch of this Bible were simply Tyndale’s (Dawley).  The following year, Matthew’s Bible was produced; scholars agree that, with slight changes, it consists of four groups of material: A. Tyndale’s New Testament B. Tyndale’s Pentateuch C. an English version of the Historical Books that shows every sign of having been done by Tyndale D. the rest of the Bible, taken over from Coverdale’s version (Daniell 334ff.).  Every Bible after this one, down to the Authorized Version of 1611, and even down to more modern translations in the same tradition, are based on Matthew’s Bible.  As a result, William Tyndale has a greater claim than any other man to being the father of the English Bible.  Consequently, his influence on English language and literature is unrivaled, with the sole towering exception of another Englishman named William: Shakespeare himself.

Conclusion

How then does one describe this series of events?  Shall we call it the story of one man’s heroic struggle to provide his people with God’s Word in spite of demonic opposition?  Shall we call it one man’s battle to save his beloved Christendom—or at least preserve his own land as Catholic—by stemming an onrushing tide of heresy?  Perhaps we can see these events rather as something else; not as something epic, but as something tragic. 

Consider: at the dawn of the 1520’s, England was the only European nation without a vernacular bible.  Many leading lights of the literary scene desired such a version, including Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, and Bishop John Fisher (Duffy 80).  Within 20 years, such an English version would be widely available.  There is no solid reason for assuming that the king’s semi-conversion to Protestantism and his arrogation of the bishops’ power to authorize a translation were necessary prerequisites of this event. 

Most, if not all, would agree that Tyndale’s goal of providing the Scriptures in English was a good one; and few who have read his work—either in the original or as it survives in later translations—can doubt that he had a gift for translating, perhaps even a providential call to translate.  But his gift for translation was marred by a passionate hatred of the Catholic Church as it existed at the time, a hatred which led him to avoid the very word “church” in his translation of the New Testament.

  Meanwhile, Sir Thomas More found himself attempting to navigate between his own personal Scylla and Charybdis.  On the one hand, he had a radical Englishman trying to use his English version of the Bible to undermine the people’s faith in the church More loved and to promote doctrines More saw as abominable heresies; on the other hand, by 1532, he faced a sovereign ready to break from Christendom and behead his highest officials in order to obtain the male heir he so desired.  More can be seen as a man trying, in the face of the inevitable and irresistible, to do all he could do to resist, and having done all, to stand.  Tyndale was equally willing to stand for his beliefs, but he was also impatient and lacking in subtlety of mind.  This tragedy—and tragedy it truly is—is a tragedy of impatience, of a king and a reformer unwilling to wait for the things they desired.  More and Tyndale were not the first ones to lose their lives in this tragedy (Fisher was beheaded shortly before More; cf. Marius 503-04), and they would not be the last.   

One wonders, what would have happened if, instead of running off to Wittenberg and Luther at the first sign of reluctance to sponsor his translation, Tyndale had been more patient?  What if his desire to translate the Word had not gotten mixed up with a reforming passion more radical than that shown by any of the leading Protestant thinkers, one that appeared ready to raze the existing church to the ground so that he and others like him could rebuild it?  What if he had been able to make or oversee the translation of the first full English version of the Bible, so that even Job’s lament could be heard in Tyndale’s beautiful voice?   What if things had gone only a little differently, and King Henry had gotten his annulment without breaking with Rome, as one major Catholic historian believes could have happened (Belloc Happened 64)?  What if Henry’s older brother had not died and England in 1520 had been ruled by a Catholic King Arthur with the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella as his queen?  It is not vain to speculate about the alternate possible paths of history.  History, as Emerson reminds us, is properly, only biography, and biography is shaped by choice.  To reflect on what could have been is to better understand what yet could be, and what role each of us might play in making it so.

Works Cited

Alighieri, Dante.  “The Four Levels of Interpretation.”  Literary Criticism of Dante Alighieri. 

            Trans. & Ed. Robert S. Haller.  Lincoln: U. of Nebraska P., 1973.  112-14.

Anderson, Marvin W.  “William Tyndale (d. 1536): a Martyr for All Seasons.”  The Sixteenth

            Century Journal 17.3 (1986): 331-52.

Belloc, Hilaire.  Characters of the Reformation.  1936.  Image Books Ed.  Garden City, NY:

            Image Books, 1958.

---.  How the Reformation Happened.  1928.  Rockford, IL: TAN Books and Publishers, Inc. 

            1992.

Daniell, David.  Introduction.  The Obedience of a Christian Man.  By William Tyndale.  1528. 

            Ed. David Daniell.  London: Penguin Books, 2000.  viii-xxix.

---.  William Tyndale: A Biography.  New Haven, CN: Yale UP, 1994.

Dawley, Powel Mills.  “Coverdale, Miles.”  Encyclopedia Americana Deluxe Library ed. 

            Danbury, CN: Grolier Inc., 1994.

Duffy, Eamon.  The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400-1580.  2^nd

            ed.  New Haven, CN: Yale UP, 2005.

Edwards, Brian.  God’s Outlaw.  Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1976.

Ferguson, Everett.  “William Tyndale and the Bible in English.”  Restoration Quarterly 14.3-4

            (1971): 129-41.

Fox[e], John.  Fox’s Book of Martyrs: A History of the Lives, Suffering, and Triumphant Deaths

            of the Early Christian and the Protestant Martyrs.  1563.  English ed.  Ed. William

            Byron Forbush.  Philadelphia: John C. Winston Co., 1926.

Ginsberg, David.  “Ploughboys Versus Prelates: Tyndale and More and the Politics of Biblical

            Translation.”  The Sixteenth Century Journal 19.1 (1988): 45-61.

Greene, James J.  Introduction.  The Essential Thomas More.  Eds. James J. Greene and John P.

            Dolan.  New York: Mentor-Omega, 1967.  11-22. 

---, and John P. Dolan.  Introduction.  “An Answer to Martin Luther.”  The Essential Thomas

            More.  New York: Mentor-Omega, 1967.  109-10. 

Harbison, E. Harris.  The Christian Scholar in the Age of Reformation.  New York: Charles

            Scribner’s Sons, 1956. 

Hecht, Jamey.  “Limitations of Textuality in Thomas More’s Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer.” 

            The Sixteenth Century Journal 26.4 (1995): 823-28.

Hitchcock, James.  “More and Tyndale’s Controversy over Religion: a Test of the McLuhan

            Hypothesis.”  Journal of the American Academy of Religion 39.4 (1971): 448-66.

King, John N.  “‘The Light of Printing’: William Tyndale, John Foxe, John Day, and Early

            Modern Print Culture.”  Renaissance Quarterly 54.1 (2001): 52-85.

Lewis, C.S.  English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama.  The Oxford History

            of English Literature 3.  Oxford: UP, 1954.

Marius, Richard.  Thomas More: A Biography.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985.

More, St. Thomas.  The Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer.  1532-33.  New Haven, CN: Yale        UP, 1973.  Vol. 8 of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More.  Eds. Louis A. Schuster

            et al. 15 vols.  1961-Present.   

---.  A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation.  1534.  Ed. Leland Miles.  Bloomington:

            Indiana UP, 1965.

Moynahan, Brian.  God’s Bestseller: William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the

            English Bible.  New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003.

Mozley, J.F.  Coverdale and his Bibles.  London: Lutterworth Press, 1953. 

Pineas, Rainer.  Thomas More and Tudor Polemics.  Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1968.

---.  “Thomas More’s use of Dialogue Form as a Weapon of Religious Controversy.”  Studies in

            the Renaissance 7 (1960): 193-206. 

---.  “Thomas More’s use of Humor as a Weapon of Religious Controversy.”  Studies in

            Philology 58.2 (1961): 97-114. 

---.  “William Tyndale: Controversialist.”  Studies in Philology 60.2 (1963): 117-32.

---.  “William Tyndale’s Use of History as a Weapon of Religious Controversy.”  Harvard

            Theological Review 55.2 (1962): 121-41.

Powell, Ken, and Chris Cook.  English Historical Facts, 1485-1603.  London: Macmillan Press

            Ltd., 1977.

Ridley, Jasper.  Thomas Cranmer.  Oxford: UP, 1962.

Sylvester, R.S.  “More, Sir Thomas, St.”  New Catholic Encyclopedia  2^nd ed.  Washington,

            D.C.: Thomson Gale, 2003.  

Tyndale, William.  “Aprologe Shewing the vse of the Scripture.”  William Tyndale’s Five

            Books of Moses, Called the Pentateuch: Being a Verbatim Reprint of the Edition of

            M.CCCCC.XXX [1530].  1530.  Trans. William Tyndale.  Carbondale: Southern Illinois

            UP, 1967.  7-14.

---.   The Obedience of a Christian Man.  1528.  Ed. David Daniell.  London: Penguin Books,

            2000.

---.  Trans.  Tyndale’s New Testament.  1534.  Ed. David Daniell.  New Haven, CN: Yale UP,

            1989.  

---.  Trans.  William Tyndale’s Five Books of Moses, Called the Pentateuch: Being a Verbatim

            Reprint of the Edition of M.CCCCC.XXX [1530].  1530.  Carbondale: Southern Illinois

            UP, 1967.

---.   “W.T. to the Reader.”  William Tyndale’s Five Books of Moses, Called the Pentateuch:

            Being a Verbatim Reprint of the Edition of M.CCCCC.XXX [1530].  1530.  Trans.

            William Tyndale.  Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1967.  2-6.

Zagorin, Perez.  How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West.  Princeton: UP, 2003.