THAT all sorts and conditions of men suffered for their faith during these troublous times is plain from the fact that we have the record of six persons who were condemned as heretics on February 9th, 1554. They are described briefly as “a butcher, a barber, a weaver, a gentleman, a priest, and a weaver’s apprentice.”
Next day a Spanish friar, in a sermon preached before Philip, was bold enough to reproach the bishops with the dreadful crime of burning men for religion. “Ye have not learned it in the Holy Scripture,” he said, “to put any to death for conscience, but rather to let them live and be converted.” This sermon had some effect, and the fierceness of the persecution abated for a time.
The London of that time saw many a strange sight, for side by side with the terrible scenes which took place, when great crowds assembled to see a few poor gospelers meet their fiery death, there were to be seen nearly every day grand processions ― sometimes it was the king and queen passing through the city, and showing themselves to their “loving subjects”; sometimes a procession of school children marching round St. Paul’s. At their head walked a great company of priests, bearing crosses and chanting a Latin hymn, and next came a troop of bishops, with the Bishop of London in his miter, carrying the sacrament, while a splendid canopy was held over him, and torches flared and flickered in the wind. At another time the Londoners came in crowds to one of the great shows, which were specially provided to please the people, where were “giants and hobby horses, drums and guns, morice dances, and other minstrels.”
But amid all the gaiety many hearts were aching with a pain which no May dances or jugglers’ tricks could charm away, for sad stories, only half told, were abroad concerning the sufferings of those who were in prison, and were perhaps nigh unto death―a cruel death, from which no love of dearest friend could avail to rescue them. It was whispered that on New Year’s Eve, when the merry-making was at its height, more than thirty men and women had been taken by night in Bow Churchyard whilst holding a meeting for reading and prayer in English. None had escaped. The man who was counted their minister had been sent to the Tower, and the rest to different prisons. It was but too true. We must not forget that during the whole of Mary’s reign little companies of these “gospelers” used to assemble to read and pray, and take the Lord’s Supper together. It was noticed that, though several of them were taken and put to death, the number of those who attended these secret meetings, at peril of their lives, seemed only to increase, though sometimes they came together only to pray. At one of these meetings, when the little company was betrayed by one who pretended to be of their number, John Rough was taken. He had been a priest, but became a preacher of the gospel in the reign of Edward. When the time of trouble came he went abroad with his wife, and they supported themselves for some time by knitting. Coming to England for yarn, he went to the meetings of the gospelers, and was very helpful to them, until that winter night when he was taken from them, and they saw him no more till he was brought out to die at Smithfield.
Another who did much to help the scattered sheep of Christ at this time was George Eagles, who went by the name of Trudge-over, so unwearied was he in traveling from place to place, seeking to strengthen and encourage his brethren. After gathering a little company and preaching to them, Trudge often had to hide himself in some hole, or in a thicket, for he was so well known, that diligent search was made for him. It was said that the little congregations to which he preached were traitorous meetings, for a law had been made, by which it was treason for more than six men to flock together for any purpose, and when Trudge was at last taken he suffered as a traitor.
At the burning of seven gospelers, who had been taken at a meeting in a field at Islington, at which about forty were present, a proclamation was made in the name of the king and queen that “no man, under pain of death, should approach them, touch them, speak to them, comfort them, pray for them, or once say, ‘God help them!’”
In spite of this, one man who had been present at the meeting, but had escaped, turned to the assembled crowd, and said, with a loud voice, “We know that they are the people of God, and therefore we cannot choose but wish well to them, and say, ‘God strengthen them!’” And as he cried, “Almighty God, for Christ’s sake, strengthen them!” one deep “Amen” rose, like a cry for help, from the hushed multitude. The officers, who had orders to arrest any who should show signs of sympathy, looked one at another, not knowing where to begin, so universal was the expression of it.
Small and feeble as these little companies might seem, they baffled all the efforts of the bishops, and continued to assemble, constantly changing their places of meeting for greater security, until the time came when it was no longer treason for them to come together. We read of one meeting at the house of a nobleman, another in the loft of a clothworker in Cheapside. Again, they met on board a ship, in a cooper’s house, in the fields. At one of their meetings by night, we are told of a man who came as a spy, and who was converted as he listened to the reading and the prayers. Fervent prayer there was, especially for “the Lord’s prisoners,” and for those of their brethren who were in exile in foreign lands, for whom they often collected as much as ten pounds―a large sum at that time―at one night’s meeting, and in spite of the vigilance of Gardiner, who had said that by hindering any money or provisions being sent to them, he could “make them so hungry that they should eat their fingers’ ends,” the money thus collected did reach those for whom it was intended.
These exiles were chiefly those who had been advised to fly at the beginning of Mary’s reign. They had taken refuge in France, Flanders, Germany, and Switzerland, and were especially to be found at Frankfort and at Zurich. It was especially for the exiles that the translation of the Bible called the Genevan was made.
Coverdale was among those who left England for the Continent. In his behalf the King of Denmark wrote to Queen Mary, asking as a favor that he might be allowed to come and settle in Denmark, whither his wife and her sister seem to have already gone. He did not, however, remain there long; the king would gladly have kept him, but his ignorance of the language prevented him from preaching, and he soon went to join his countrymen in Germany.
The story of these refugees is not a cheering one. Escaped from persecution at home, but also cut off from their usual occupations, they busied themselves in earnest disputations about the right forms of prayer to be used, and the dress suitable to be worn by the clergy. The result of these contentions was a separation among them. Many left Frankfort for Geneva, where there was soon a large English congregation, and there we find Coverdale living among them, and helping William Wittingham and others about the new translation, which, unlike any which had gone before it, was the work, not of one scholar, patiently laboring on alone, but of many working together and helping each other.
The Genevan Bible bears marks of the very great pains taken by the translators to make the sense clear, and the margin is rich in notes. The New Testament was printed first, and, for the first time, in verses, while italics were used to show where words, not actually in the Greek text, had been inserted to make the meaning plainer.
We may imagine that it was not easy for people who were exiles in a strange country to get the means to live, yet they willingly gave money for the printing of this New Testament, and a beautiful little volume it was, printed in clear silver type upon fine paper.
Even then, however, though news did not reach Geneva for more than a month after the death of the queen, the days of their exile were drawing to a close, for at the accession of Elizabeth the banished ones might return without fear. About two years later the whole Genevan Bible was published, and became very popular; so much, indeed, was it in favor with the people that it was very generally used long after the translation made in the reign of James the First, which we now use, had been in circulation.
It is interesting for us to notice that with the publication of this Bible, at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, the time of danger and difficulty in connection with translating the Scriptures into English, or reading and circulating them, came to an end. “Persecution for the word’s sake” there has been and will be as long as there are those who faithfully hold, and seek to carry out its teachings; but, from that time to this, it has never been counted unlawful for the poorest or most ignorant of the people to have God’s word in their own tongue, and to read it openly, before all men.
We find Coverdale, now an old man, in London again in 1559, preaching at St. Paul’s Cross, as he had done forty years before. He was spoken of affectionately as “Father Coverdale” by those who remembered that he had been the associate and friend of Tyndale, and who saw him, at seventy-eight, still preaching the gospel, spite of age and infirmities. He died at the age of eighty-one.