COVERDALE. 121 HenryVIII. to the King of France, soliciting his licenseand allowance for printing the English.Bible in the university of Paris, since it could be done there to much greater advantage than in England. The King of France granting the privilege, thework was immediatelyundertaken; andas Coverdale was a person eminentlyqualified for the office, he was appointed to superintend the press. He also compared the former translations with the original Hebrew and Greek, making the requisite alterations and amendments. When the work was nearly completed, the printer was convened before the tribunal of the Inquisition, and charged with heresy. Coverdale and others were sent for; but, aware of the approaching storm, they fled for their lives, and left their Bibles behind them, to the number of two thousand five hundred. Thus, he narrowly escaped the rack, the fire, or some equally cruel torture. As the heretical translator could not be found, the Bibles wereall seized, arid committed to the care of one Lieutenant Criminal, to be burnt at Paris ; but instead of casting the whole of them to the flames, he, through covetousness, sold four great fats full of them to an haberdasher, as waste paper, of whom they were afterwards purchased. All the rest were publicly burnt at Paris. Afterwards LordCrom- well. wenthimself to Paris, when he procured the printing- press, and brought the servants of the printer to London, where the remaining part of the Bible was printed, though not without much opposition from the bishops.± The first publication of the Bible in English roused the malice and of the bigotted prelates. Their anger and jealousy being awakened, they laid their complaints before the king; who, in compliance with their suggestions, ordered all the copies to be called in, and promised them a new translation. And when the translation in 1537, called Coverdale's translation, came forth, the bishops told Henry, Thomas Lord Cromwell was the son of a blacksmith at Putney, and some time served as a soldier in Italy, under the Duke of Bourbon. He was afterwards secretary to Cardinal Wolsey ; and recommended himself to Henry VIII. by discovering that the clergy were privately absolved from their oath to him, and sworn anew to the pope. This discovery furnished the king with a pretence for the suppression of monasteries, in which Cromwell was a principal instrument. The king, whose mercies were cruel, raised him to a most envied pitch of honour and preferment, a little before his fall. He first amused him with an agreeable prospect, and then pushed him down a precipice. Cromwell, as vicegerent, had the precedence of all great officers of state ; but lost his head July28, 1640.- Granger's Biog. Hist. vol. i. p. 86. + Fox's Martyrs, vol. ii. p. 434, 435,- Lewis's Mist. of Trans. p. 29.
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