P032 A Short History of the English Bible.
P032 A Short History of the English Bible.
Conjectures are various, but it is useless to repeat them. To add to the mystery, the initials "I. R." are boldly placed in large capitals at the bottom of "An exhortacyon to the study of the holy Scrypture," showing that "Iohn" Rogers had no wish to conceal his identity.
It was probably printed, in part, at least, at Antwerp by the printer of Coverdale’s Bible, Jacob Van Meteren, who was related to Rogers by marriage.(1) When the work had advanced as far as Isaiah, Grafton and Whitechurch, the London printers, seem to have become interested in the matter, and to have purchased the material, either finishing the work in Antwerp, or transferring it to London for completion. When the book was printed the English printers gave copies to Cranmer, and, also, to Cromwell, through whose influence the royal sanction was obtained.
This, it will be noticed, was in the same year that the license was given to Coverdale’s Bible. Which received the royal sanction first is not definitely known.
Orders were likewise issued directing the public reading of the Bible in the churches.
Shortly after the publication of this Bible Rogers went to Wittenberg, where he took charge of a German congregation. On the accession of Edward VI. he returned to England, where he was appointed successively to several ecclesiastical positions. On the accession of Mary, in 1553, Rogers was one of the first to feel the change.
He was arrested, and, after an imprisonment of two years, steadily refusing to acknowledge the papal creed and authority, he was condemned to death, and was burned at Smithfield, on February 4, 1555, being the first of the many martyrs(2) of the Marian persecution. The work was not so much a translation as a revision of the translations of others.
------------ (FN1)Stevens, pp. 39, 75.
(FN2)In four years two hundred and eighty-six were burned, and sixty-eight perished in prison.
See table in Perry’s "History of the Church of England," p. 251.
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