The lonely fortress of Mont-Saint-Michel saw the end of a bitter controversialist, Noël Bède, who died there in 1587. He wrote _Natalis Bedoe, doctoris Theol. Parisiensis annotationum in Erasmi paraphrases Novi Testamenti, et Jacobi Fabri Stapulensis commentarios in Evangelistas, Paulique Epistolas, Libri III., Parisiis_, 1526, _in-fol_. This work abounds in vehement criticisms and violent declamations. Erasmus did not fail to reply to his calumniator, and detected no less than eighty-one falsehoods, two hundred and six calumnies, and forty-seven blasphemies. Bède continued to denounce Erasmus as a heretic, and in a sermon before the court reproached the king for not punishing such unbelievers with sufficient rigour. The author was twice banished, and finally was compelled to make a public retractation in the Church of Notre Dame, for having spoken against the king and the truth, and to be exiled to Mont-Saint-Michel. Translators of the Bible fared not well at the hands of those who were unwilling that the Scriptures should be studied in the vulgar tongue by the lay-folk, and foremost among that brave band of self-sacrificing scholars stands William Tyndale. His life is well known, and needs no recapitulation; but it may be noted that his books, rather than his work of translating the Scriptures, brought about his destruction. His important work called _The Practice of Prelates_, which was mainly directed against the corruptions of the hierarchy, unfortunately contained a vehement condemnation of the divorce of Catherine of Arragon by Henry VIII. This deeply offended the monarch at the very time that negotiations were in progress for the return of Tyndale to his native shores from Antwerp, and he declared that he was "very joyous to have his realm destitute of such a person." The _Practice of Prelates_ was partly written in answer to the _Dialogue_ of Sir Thomas More, who was commissioned to combat the "pernicious and heretical" works of the "impious enemies of the Church." Tyndale wrote also a bitter _Answer_ to the _Dialogue_, and this drew forth from More his abusive and scurrilous _Confutation_, which did little credit to the writer or to the cause for which he contended Tyndale's longest controversial work, entitled _The Obedience of a Christian Man, and how Christian Rulers ought to govern_, although it stirred up much hostility against its author, very favourably impressed King Henry, who delighted in it, and declared that "the book was for him and for all kings to read." The story of the burning of the translation of the New Testament at St. Paul's Cross by Bishop Tunstall, of the same bishop's purchase of a "heap of the books" for the same charitable purpose, thereby furnishing Tyndale with means for providing another edition and for printing his translation of the Pentateuch, all this is a thrice-told tale. Nor need we record the account of the conspiracy which sealed his doom. For sixteen months he