Then came Tyndale, whose ambition was to make a translation that any one could understand. He said: "If God spare me life, ere many years I will cause the boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scriptures than you priests do." His version of a few books of the Bible was published first at Cologne, but its acceptance in England was greatly hindered by the translator's polemical notes. Tyndale was burned at the stake in Belgium for the crime of having translated the Bible into the speech of the common people. He will always be remembered as the pioneer who prepared the way for the Authorized Version. After Tyndale came Rogers, who carried on his work as far as Isaiah. He was followed by Coverdale who wrote fine sonorous English prose, but was weak in scholarship. His translation was superseded by the Geneva Version, made in 1568 by English refugees in the Swiss city. The Geneva translation is noteworthy as the first to appear in Roman type, all the others being in black letter. The King James Bible was first proposed at the Hampden Conference in 1604. The Bishops opposed the scheme, but the King was greatly taken with it, and in his usual arbitrary way he appointed himself director of the work and issued instructions to the fifty-four scholars chosen. One-third of these were from Oxford, one-third from Cambridge and the remainder from Westminster. They worked three years at the task and produced what is known as the Authorized Version. There seems to be a strong prejudice against King James because of his eccentricities, and most writers on the Bible declare that this version was never authorized by King, Privy Council, Convocation or Parliament. This is wrong, for King James authorized the book, and it owed its existence directly to him. Anglicans and Puritans in this famous Conference were bitterly hostile to each other, and if they had had their way we should never have had this fine version of the Bible. The King was president of the Conference, but the two factions were ready to fly at each other's throats over such questions as the baptism of infants, the authority of the Bishop of Rome and others. The King, however, brushed all these questions aside. He said that the Geneva Bible taught sedition and disobedience, and by royal mandate he ordered Bishop Reynolds and his associates to make the best version in their power. So the credit which the King received by having his name joined to the Bible was well deserved.