forward his views, but Humphrey Munmouth, merchant, showed him no little kindness, having been attracted to him by the style and earnestness of his sermons, and he then took up his abode with this "Gaius," his host. As Munmouth dealt in cloths, he had commercial transactions with the manufacturers of Gloucestershire, among whom would in all likelihood, be some of Tyndale's relations. Munmouth was the benefactor of many other reformers, such as Fryth; and it is most probable that at this time Tyndale made the acquaintance of one so "like minded," who became so dear to him, and preceded him in martyrdom. For Fryth had not come to Cambridge before Tyndale left it, and he was arrested with others at Oxford in 1528. A year's residence in London taught Tyndale many painful lessons, and he traced the divine hand and purpose in his disappointments. The pomp and power of ecclesiastical dignitaries, their blindness and their security, their disrelish of evangelical truth and their malignant opposition to the circulation of the Scriptures even in Greek; their dread of change, and their stern suspicions of all who might ripen into reformers, saddened him and brought him to "understand at the last, not only that there was no room in my Lord of London's palace to translate the New Testament; but also, that there was no place to do it in all England, as experience doth now (1530) openly declare." He must have observed many indications of a darkening period of conflict. Fox, Bishop of Winchester, had, in 1516, instituted Corpus Christi College at Oxford, and given it teachers both of Latin and Greek. Wolsey, "a scholar, and a ripe and good one," had also, in 1519, founded a Greek professorship at Oxford, and another of Rhetoric and Latin. The occupants of these chairs were violently assailed; but the king interposed and ordered that "the study of the Scriptures in the original languages," should not only be permitted for the future, but received as a regular branch of academical study. Such incidents showed an incipient appreciation of the study of the original Scriptures, and it was not too profound a vaticination to foresee that the next step after the possession and study of the Greek New Testament, must VI.] HUMPHREY MUNMOUTH. 117 naturally be the translation of it as a national necessity. Tyndale had likewise seen the effects of the Greek New Testament at Cambridge, its saving power on some, and its hardening effect on others; indeed, one of the colleges had forbidden the entrance of the book within its walls, "by horse or by boat, by wheels or on foot," and Erasmus himself had been openly opposed by Lee and by Standish.1 Tyndale could forecast, from such commotions, what the result would be at no distant date, and could divine that the authorities in the church would rise from warning to formal inhibition, and from it to persecution and capital punishment. The path which Providence had marked out for Tyndale was not one of bustle, remonstrance, or agitation. His work needed quiet and leisure, prolonged and undisturbed study. His manner of life in London was honestly told a few years later by Munmouth, in self-defence before the Privy Council, in May, 1528. He was formally accused of giving money to Tyndale when he was abroad, of contributing pecuniary help to the translation of the New Testament, and of having his version and some heretical books in his possession. His house had been searched, and himself examined and sent to the Tower on the 14th of May. Four days after his imprisonment, the "poor prisoner" sent a memorial to Wolsey and the Council praying for liberation. This memorial describes in simple terms the manner of Tyndale's life, while he stayed with this kind protector. "I took him into my house half a year; and there he lived as a good priest, as methought. He studied most part of the day and of the night at his book; and he would eat but sodden meat, by his goodwill; and drink but single small beer. I never saw him wear linen about him, in the time he was with 1 See, on the Novum Instrumentum of Erasmus, Seebohm's Oxford Reformers of 1498, London, 1867, p. 365. Lee asserted that he had discovered 300 errors in it, and Standish was horrified beyond measure at the substitution of sermo for verbum in John i, 1. Both men adored the Vulgate, and many of their contemporaries believed in the inspiration of Jerome. Stunica was patriotically indignant that Erasmus had dared to spell his native country Zavía in Rom. xv, 28, not 'Ioπavía, robbing the haughty kingdom of a letter. me. I did promise him ten pounds sterling to pray for my father and mother, their souls, and all Christian souls. I did pay it him when he made his exchange to Hamborough. Afterward he got of some other men, ten pounds sterling more, the which he left with me. And within a year after, he sent for his ten pounds to me from Hamborough, and thither I sent it him by one Hans Collenbeke. And since I have never sent him the value of one penny, nor never will. I have given more exhibitions1 to scholars in my days than to that priest. The foresaid sir William left me an English book, called Enchiridion. Also, I had a little treatise that the priest sent me, when he sent for his money. When I heard my lord of London preach at St. Paul's Cross, that sir William Tyndale had translated the New Testament into English, and was naughtily translated, that was the first time that ever I suspected or knew any evil of him." Ten pounds was then probably equal in value to £150 of present currency. An acre of land was at this period about eightpence in annual value, and the average price of wheat was six and eightpence a quarter, while beef or pork was a halfpenny, and mutton three farthings a pound. In 1525, a pair of hose cost two and fourpence, and a pair of shoes one and fourpence. Latimer's father had a farm of three or four pounds by the year. A penny a day as a labourer's wages, therefore, represents considerably more than a shilling at the present time.3 By Act of Parliament under Henry V, "the wages of a parish priest had been fixed at £5, 6s. 8d. a year, and the statute remained in force in the reign of Henry VIII. Bradford the martyr writes in 1549, "My fellowship here (Pembroke Hall) is worth seven pounds a year. Thus you see what a good Lord God is to me."4 The salary of Udal, as head-master of Eton, was ten pounds a year; and ten pounds a year was all that Tyndale himself asked for support in teaching and preaching. It need not create surprise that in the declaration of Munmouth the poor scholar is usually called Sir William. 1 Small pensions or stipends. 2 See p. 112. 3 Froude's History, vol. i, p. 21, &c. 1 VI.] SIR, MASTER, DOCTOR. 119 "Sir," representing the Latin Dominus, does not seem have been given, at least originally, to all priests. It was not an academic title, but was conferred at first on persons in orders who had taken a Bachelor's degree. Those who had proceeded to M.A. were called Master, Magister.1 "Sir" is often the title given to domestic chaplains, probably because many of this class, from poverty on other causes, had left the university without taking the Master's degree. As a complimentary title it may have been given at length on a wider scale; but Masters and Doctors would repudiate it, as they had the right to a more distinctive appellation. The familiar apellation of Sir William would, therefore, seem to imply that Tyndale had not become Master of Arts. 66 1 There are lists of Scottish clergy, as in Knox's History and other old documents, in which occurs the title Sir," along with Magister, Frater, and Doctor. Knox himself is called Sir John Knox, as he had not a Master's degree. In Bishop Longland's letter to Wolsey about the spread of heresy at Oxford and the introduction into the University of Tyndale's translation, there is this list given of ringleaders," with Master Garret; with Master Clark ; Sir Fryth, Sir Dyot and Anthony Dalaber, of Albans Hall, the last being a secular scholar. Fryth had taken B.A. at Cambridge, prior to his translation to Oxford, but Garret, curate to the rector of Honey Lane, London, wore his Master's hood when he carried his faggot from St. Mary's to Cardinal College. 2 See p. 109. CHAPTER VII. WHAT Tyndale could not enjoy in England his eager spirit hoped to find abroad. He left London, probably in May, 1524, certainly not in January, as Anderson thinks, for at that season the navigation of the Elbe is impeded by the ice. His expatriation was forced upon him; residence at home was incompatible with the duty which he had laid upon himself. Some seven years after, in 1531, he appealed to Vaughan, a candid correspondent of Crumwell and King Henry, in feeling words, which the envoy repeated to His Majesty: "If for my pains therein taken; if for my poverty; if for mine exile from my native land, and bitter absence from my friends; if for my hunger, my thirst, and my cold, and the danger with which I am everywhere compassed, and finally, if for innumerable other hard and sharp fightings which I endure."1 . . . He did not become a Stoic, soured at his country and longing for revenge. He was no fanatic ever weaving plots and combinations to secure his return; no splenetic fugitive bewailing his fate in bitterness of soul, or venting his wrath in puny diatribes or malignant satires. He felt all the privations of an exile from a land "loved and longed for;" but, having counted the cost, and made his choice, he patiently and heroically suffered scorn, poverty, sudden flights, with other nameless evils, that he might finish his work. If the faces of kindred and friends sometimes haunted him, and the voice of a mother or sister fell like a soft and distant echo on his ear, if at such a weary moment he was tempted to look back, his hand never left the plough which always traced a deep and straight furrow. Cotton MSS., Titus, B. i. |