Tindale Memorial Window in Bible House London _Frontispiece_ Facing Page William Tindale. Drawn by I. H. Lynch from an old portrait by Pass xiii Erasmus: 1526, after Dürer 2 Printing Press, 1511. The earliest known representation of a Printing Press, from the title page of Hegesippus' Hist. de Bello Judaico, printed by Jodocus Badius Ascensius, Paris 1511 30 [1]Page of Octavo New Testament, 1525 33 [1]Page of Octavo New Testament, Revised, 1534-6 36 [1]Facsimile of the only known letter of Tindale 48 Tindale's Monument at North Nibley, near Little Sodbury 50 [1] By kind permission of the Religious Tract Society. INTRODUCTION "The first scholar and the first divine of his epoch"—the words stand true of William Tindale; but his personality is even more arresting, for only a man richly endowed with courage, sincerity, uprightness, the sense of duty and the love of country, could have served England so nobly as he did: yet England knows not the man. Fifteen years, or sixteen at most, early in the Sixteenth Century, 1520-1536, enclose the immemorial labors of William Tindale. During that decade and a half there were for him experiences and enterprises which went to the making of the man, and show what manner of man he was: but which also set him forth as one of the greatest of his race. Formative years preceded these; some thirty of them one conjectures; of which, however, we can discover little. We get glimpses of him and his doings; but they are like flashes of lightning in a dark sky. A narrative of this man's life would seem forever impossible: what letters there were, or other documents, disappeared long ago: and the path he trod with unfaltering step we can trace in patches only. For all that it is possible to set out the features of the man, realize the massive qualities he possessed, recall his surroundings, the atmosphere he breathed, the hostility he aroused, the victory he won at the cost of his life; and so to recognize the valor, the magnanimity, and in a word the greatness of this too little known English worthy. A biographic blank like this, where incidents of consequence must have transpired, is not altogether unknown in history. History encounters the same difficulty in the life of Wyclif. The character of his parents is unknown. Not an anecdote of his boyhood remains. His life at Oxford, extending over forty years, yields but a single incident.