men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people with devotion and soberness well and reverently read.”  This statement is further corroborated by Foxe, the martyrologist, who remarks:  “If histories be well examined, we shall find both before and after the Conquest, as well before John Wickliffe was borne as since, the whole body of the Scriptures by sundry men translated into this our country tongue.”  Wycliffe’s Bible was first printed at Oxford in 1850, previous to which the New Testament appeared in 1721 and was reprinted in 1810.

In 1526, William Tyndale completed and published in English his translation of the New Testament.  He also translated and printed the Pentateuch and the book of Jonah, and was preparing them for publication when he was put to death in Flanders, being strangled and burnt for heresy.  Tyndale’s translation, with his latest revisions (1534), was republished in the English Hexapla in 1841.  A copy of his translation of the Pentateuch which had belonged to Bishop Heber was sold in 1854 for $795.  Four years later another copy sold for within twenty dollars of that amount.

The first English translation of the entire Bible was made by Miles Coverdale, who afterward became bishop of Exeter, and was printed in folio in the year 1535.  In 1538 a second edition of Coverdale’s Bible was printed at Paris, but the Inquisition interfered and committed the whole edition of twenty-five hundred copies to the flames.  No perfect copy of Coverdale’s version is known to exist, but one lacking the original title-page and first leaf was sold in 1854 for $1725.  Another, at the Perkins’ sale, in June, 1873, brought $2000.

Two years after the appearance of the first edition of Coverdale’s Bible, John Rogers, the first martyr in Queen Mary’s reign, published his version of the Scriptures.  He made some emendations, but the text is chiefly that of Tyndale and Coverdale.  It was printed by Grafton and Whitchurch in 1537, and the title runs:  “The Byble, which is all the holy Scripture:  in which are contayned the Olde and Newe Testament truely and purely translated into Englysh by Thomas Matthew.”  For safety, Rogers assumed the name of Matthew, whence it is known as Matthew’s Bible.  Seven hundred and fifty dollars have been paid for a copy.

The third version of the Bible, known as Taverner’s, was published in 1539.  Richard Taverner was a learned man who published many translations during the sixteenth century.  Horne says of his translation, “This is neither a bare revisal of Cranmer’s Bible nor a new version, but a kind of intermediate work, being a correction of what is called ‘Matthew’s Bible.’”