P040 A Short History of the English Bible.

P040 A Short History of the English Bible. The joy of the people at this opportunity of reading the Bible was very great. In May, 1541, another similar proclamation was issued, and in 1542 the curates of the parish churches were directed to read the Bible in English, publicly, in course. The Great Bible became very popular. "From 1539 to 1541 so large was the demand that it is supposed not fewer than twenty-one thousand copies were printed."(1) In 1543 the disposition of the king seemed to waver, for at his suggestion Parliament passed an act prohibiting the use of Tyndale’s translations, ordering the destruction of all annotations and preambles, and forbidding certain classes, such as apprentices, mechanics, farmers, servants, and laborers, to read any part of the Bible, either in public or in private.

Cranmer’s Bible was not issued after 1541 until 1549. It was issued, at intervals, for twenty years after, sometimes in folio, sometimes in 4to., and in one instance (1566) an edition was printed in 8vo., and was very popular because of its convenient size. In 1569 the last edition was published, in quarto form.(2) -------------------------------------------

X.

WHITTINGHAM’S NEW TESTAMENT.

William Whittingham, Born 1524, Died 1579. For principal contemporaries see under Coverdale, page 28.

Whittingham was born in 1524, in Lanchester, near Durham.

He was educated in Oxford, and afterward spent many years in foreign travel. He returned home in 1553, only a few weeks before the death of Edward VI., but soon left again for the Continent. In 1554 he preached to an English congregation in Frankfort. In 1555 he married Catherine Jaque-mayne, of Orleans, the sister of Calvin’s wife. In 1556 he was appointed to succeed John Knox as pastor of the English refugees in Geneva. In 1557 his New Testament was published by Conrad Badius in Geneva.

------------ (FN1)Fry: "A Description of the Great Bible," etc. P. 1.

(FN2)See Cotton, under the various dates.

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