Tyndale
Another Englishman, William Tyndale (1494-1536) was a capstone figure in
providing an English translation of the Bible. Tyndale attended Oxford and Cambridge
becoming a very proficient Greek scholar. The Greek New Testament of Erasmus
and the works of Luther awakened in him the desire to give the Bible to the
common people in their own language. He then went to Hamburg and studied Hebrew
with some prominent Jews and then to Germany to confer with Luther. It was in
Worms, Germany that Tyndale printed his first New Testament (1525) and they were
smuggled into England.
He produced several other works while he was in hiding (no one knows where)
that greatly affected England. By 1534, believing that the Reformation in England
had reached a point that it would be safe for him to come out from hiding, he
settled in Belgium and continued his writing. He was soon arrested, imprisoned
in the castle of Vilvorde, (near Brussels) Belgium, tried for heresy and
treason, and convicted. He was first strangled and then burned him at the stake in
the prison yard on October 6, 1536.