“Imagination,” says Dr. Stoughton of the after-life of the two at Cologne, “can picture the two men, influenced by far different motives, at work in the far-famed city on the banks of the Rhine, in some poor-looking house in an obscure street, while a priest or a pilgrim passed under the windows on their way to the shrine of the Three Kings, little dreaming of the kind of employment going on there, and of the consequences to which it would lead.” In the spring of 1525 Tyndale went to Hamburg, as we have seen, in order to obtain the money that had been sent to him from London. From Hamburg, Tyndale, accompanied by Roye, went to Cologne, and now the New Testament which had been translated was put into the press. Tyndale was prepared to venture upon an edition of six thousand copies, but the printers were only willing to undertake half that number. The book was to be an octavo, and for a time the enterprise prospered and all went well. But a busybody, one John Cochlæus, who was at that time in Cologne, by some means or another obtained a hint as to the possible peril. He relates the incident with intense self-complacency, as if it were something to boast of. He says:-- “Having become intimate and familiar with the Cologne printers, he (Cochlæus) sometimes heard them confidently boast, when in their cups, that, whether the King and Cardinal of England would or not, all England would in a short time be Lutheran. He heard, also, that there were two Englishmen lurking there, skilful in languages, and fluent, whom, however, he never could see or converse with. Calling, therefore, certain printers into his lodging, after they were heated with wine, one of them, in more private discourse, discovered to him the secret by which England was to be drawn over to the side of Luther, namely, that three thousand copies of the Lutheran New Testament, translated into the English language, were in the press, and already were advanced as far as the letter K, _in ordine quarternionem_; that the expenses were wholly supplied by English merchants, who were secretly to convey the work, when printed, and to disperse it widely through all England, before the King or the Cardinal could discover or prohibit it.