Tyndale

Another Englishman, William Tyndale (1494-1536) was a capstone figure in providing an English translation of the Bible. Tyndale attended Oxford and Cambridge becoming a very proficient Greek scholar. The Greek New Testament of Erasmus and the works of Luther awakened in him the desire to give the Bible to the common people in their own language. He then went to Hamburg and studied Hebrew with some prominent Jews and then to Germany to confer with Luther. It was in Worms, Germany that Tyndale printed his first New Testament (1525) and they were smuggled into England.

He produced several other works while he was in hiding (no one knows where) that greatly affected England. By 1534, believing that the Reformation in England had reached a point that it would be safe for him to come out from hiding, he settled in Belgium and continued his writing. He was soon arrested, imprisoned in the castle of Vilvorde, (near Brussels) Belgium, tried for heresy and treason, and convicted. He was first strangled and then burned him at the stake in the prison yard on October 6, 1536.