hospitality. A group of them therefore invited the Walshes to a banquet, where they felt free to pour poison into their ears. Lady Walsh was impressed that such rich and well-read men found Tyndale to be a dangerous and misguided young man. She tackled him when she returned home. ‘There was such doctor, he may dispend £200 by the year,’ she said, ‘another one hundred pound, and another three hundred pound, and what think ye, were it reason that we should believe you before them so great, learned and beneficed men?’ Tyndale was in no position to answer – he was indeed inexperienced, and fortunate if the Walshes paid him as much as £5 a year – and he did not try to do so.
Instead, he won the family over by translating Erasmus’s book Enchiridion Militis Christiani into English. This, at least, is what Foxe claims. Foxe’s informant for this period in Tyndale’s life was probably one Richard Webb, a priest who grew up in Chipping Sodbury. Webb knew Tyndale personally and he was living nearby in his rectory at West Kingston at the time. No manuscript has been found of what would have been Tyndale’s first work as a translator – the first known edition of the Enchiridion in English was not printed for another ten years – but there is no reason why Foxe should be mistaken. It was in character for Tyndale to set himself such a project. He had a side that was bookish, vague, naive, ‘for in the wily subtleties of this world’, it was said of him, ‘he was simple and inexpert’. But he was also a doer, pragmatic and alert, who saw a chance – a gift to the Walshes that was also adummy run as a translator – and took it. If he was scholarly, he was also bold and decisive.
The Enchiridion was an apt choice. Erasmus had written it in 1501 at the request of a Frau Poopenruyter, who wanted to reform her adulterous and dissolute husband, a German arms dealer. It took the form of a handbook for the good Christian soldier, advising him how to acquire and buckle on the spiritual armour of God. In it, Erasmus stressed that the great Christian weapons are prayer and knowledge of the scriptures, especially the New Testament, and above all the gospels and the epistles of Paul to the Romans and Corinthians. Erasmus also took some sideswipes at the state of the Church. He was sharply critical of the greed and superstition of the clergy, and flayed the Schoolmen for their dullness and casuistry. Their writing was unintelligible, he said, and Christians would find all they needed in the scriptures. ‘Honourest thou the bones of Paul hid in a shrine,’ he wrote of the cult of relics, anticipating Luther by more than fifteen years, ‘and honourest thou not the mind of Paul hid in his writings?’ Through study of the scripture, and personal faith and piety, the humblest soldier could open himself to Christ.
Tyndale agreed with this, ferociously so, and it seems that the Walshes were impressed enough with his translation to become reconciled to his ideas and to turn against his critics. After the Walshes had read the book, Foxe reports, ‘those great prelates were no more so often called to the house’, and when they did come they found that they were no longer greeted with the ‘cheer and countenance’ of past visits. They rightly sensed that this ‘came by the means of Master Tyndale’ and soon ‘utterly withdrew’ and came no more to the manor.
They planned their revenge, ‘clustering together … to grudge and storm against Tyndale, railing at him in alehouses and other places’. They claimed that Tyndale was preaching heresy and denounced him secretly to the Gloucester chancellor, the chiefadministrator of the diocese, a harsh and ambitious man named John Bell. Bell had a reputation as a skilled interrogator of Lollards and other suspected heretics; four years later, he was temporarily drafted to London to examine German merchants accused of Lutheran sympathies.
Bell summoned Tyndale to appear before him
Instead, he won the family over by translating Erasmus’s book Enchiridion Militis Christiani into English. This, at least, is what Foxe claims. Foxe’s informant for this period in Tyndale’s life was probably one Richard Webb, a priest who grew up in Chipping Sodbury. Webb knew Tyndale personally and he was living nearby in his rectory at West Kingston at the time. No manuscript has been found of what would have been Tyndale’s first work as a translator – the first known edition of the Enchiridion in English was not printed for another ten years – but there is no reason why Foxe should be mistaken. It was in character for Tyndale to set himself such a project. He had a side that was bookish, vague, naive, ‘for in the wily subtleties of this world’, it was said of him, ‘he was simple and inexpert’. But he was also a doer, pragmatic and alert, who saw a chance – a gift to the Walshes that was also adummy run as a translator – and took it. If he was scholarly, he was also bold and decisive.
The Enchiridion was an apt choice. Erasmus had written it in 1501 at the request of a Frau Poopenruyter, who wanted to reform her adulterous and dissolute husband, a German arms dealer. It took the form of a handbook for the good Christian soldier, advising him how to acquire and buckle on the spiritual armour of God. In it, Erasmus stressed that the great Christian weapons are prayer and knowledge of the scriptures, especially the New Testament, and above all the gospels and the epistles of Paul to the Romans and Corinthians. Erasmus also took some sideswipes at the state of the Church. He was sharply critical of the greed and superstition of the clergy, and flayed the Schoolmen for their dullness and casuistry. Their writing was unintelligible, he said, and Christians would find all they needed in the scriptures. ‘Honourest thou the bones of Paul hid in a shrine,’ he wrote of the cult of relics, anticipating Luther by more than fifteen years, ‘and honourest thou not the mind of Paul hid in his writings?’ Through study of the scripture, and personal faith and piety, the humblest soldier could open himself to Christ.
Tyndale agreed with this, ferociously so, and it seems that the Walshes were impressed enough with his translation to become reconciled to his ideas and to turn against his critics. After the Walshes had read the book, Foxe reports, ‘those great prelates were no more so often called to the house’, and when they did come they found that they were no longer greeted with the ‘cheer and countenance’ of past visits. They rightly sensed that this ‘came by the means of Master Tyndale’ and soon ‘utterly withdrew’ and came no more to the manor.
They planned their revenge, ‘clustering together … to grudge and storm against Tyndale, railing at him in alehouses and other places’. They claimed that Tyndale was preaching heresy and denounced him secretly to the Gloucester chancellor, the chiefadministrator of the diocese, a harsh and ambitious man named John Bell. Bell had a reputation as a skilled interrogator of Lollards and other suspected heretics; four years later, he was temporarily drafted to London to examine German merchants accused of Lutheran sympathies.
Bell summoned Tyndale to appear before him
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