Words for the ploughman

On a hill above the Gloucestershire village of North Nibley sits a Victorian monument to a local son who had a profound impact on religion, society, and culture. His name was William Tyndale.

Although the details of his early life are unknown, it is widely believed that Tyndale was born either in North Nibley or in neighbouring Stinchcombe in the late 1400s. The Tyndale family in this area were influential and well-connected, and it seems likely that young William had a relatively privileged upbringing. Tyndale’s studies took him to the University of Oxford, from where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1512. After this he was ordained as a priest and may well have returned to his native Gloucestershire at this point to take up a role in a chantry chapel, although others have suggested that in this period Tyndale was furthering his studies at Cambridge.

Tyndale was certainly back in Gloucestershire by 1521, when he took up the role of chaplain and tutor to the family of Sir John Walsh at Little Sodbury. This position must have offered him plenty of opportunities to write and study, and to share his opinions with the local clergy and dignitaries who came to dine with Walsh’s household. Tyndale also preached in the open air at St Austin’s Green in Bristol. Tyndale’s ideas were, however, controversial. During one discussion, he is reported to have stated “I defy the Pope… and all his laws and if God spare my life ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.” It was his firm conviction that English people should be allowed to read the Bible in their own language, rather than it only being available in Latin. This was not a new idea, a century before Tyndale’s birth the Lollards had called for scripture to be translated into the vernacular and an English-language Bible had been published, a translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible. However, Tyndale wanted to go further and to directly translate from the Bible’s original languages.

In 1523, finding his beliefs under increased scrutiny in Gloucestershire, Tyndale moved to London and then a year later to mainland Europe. In 1526 he was finally able to realise his goal and publish a translation of the New Testament. Although initially easily available in England, Cardinal Wolsey soon ordered that copies of Tyndale’s New Testament should be seized and burned. Tyndale became a wanted man but, despite the risks, continued to refine and revise his New Testament and begin translating the first few books of the Old Testament. His work was cut short in 1535, however, when Tyndale was captured and arrested. On 6 October 1536 he was executed as a heretic at Vilvoorde.

Tyndale was a true radical. Not only did his work, for the first time, allow the English to read and hear scripture directly translated into their own language from its original texts, it also challenged the many ways in which the Latin Vulgate translation had been used to prop up the structures and hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Here one word could make all the difference. In Latin the Greek word ‘ekklesia’ had been translated as ‘Church’ and the word ‘presbyteros’ as ‘priest’, but Tyndale instead chose the more people-focussed ‘congregation’ and ‘elder’, respectively. Furthermore, Tyndale sought to democratise the translation exercise, using the preface to the 1526 edition of his New Testament to encourage readers to make amendments to his work where they felt he might have been deficient.

A radical definitely, but a rural radical? It’s interesting to ponder the various influences on Tyndale and his work and wonder whether his rural upbringing may have contributed to his vision. Certainly, Tyndale himself appears to have acknowledged that the seeds of his life’s work were planted during his early education in Gloucestershire, writing “I read when I was a child thou shalt find in the English chronicle how the king Athelstan caused the Holy Scripture to be translated into the tongue that was then in England and how the prelates exhorted him thereunto.” Tyndale’s translation was also distinctively rural, making use of Gloucestershire dialect and writing in a manner more akin to spoken English, and perhaps the spoken English of the Vale of Berkeley, than the literary English of the time. Tyndale biographer David Daniell has argued that Tyndale’s use of the word ‘elder’ rather than ‘priest’ when translating ‘presbyteros’ reflected his experience of society in a Gloucestershire village.

Tyndale’s work lives on. Many of us will have heard readings from the 1611 King James translation of the Bible, including recently during the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, and this borrowed extensively from Tyndale’s earlier translations. 93% of the New Testament in the King James Bible is Tyndale’s work, along with 85% of the first five books of the Old Testament. This means that some of our everyday phrases are Tyndale’s. Whenever we describe someone as “broken-hearted” or “the salt of the earth”, or when we talk about “the powers that be”, we are quoting Tyndale and the words and speech patterns of our ancestors. And yet, perhaps this is not in the spirit of Tyndale’s vision. After all, he wanted to see a living and accessible translation of the Bible written in language that people used in everyday life. As beautiful as it is, the insistence of some sections of society to cling to the King James Bible for use in church services and larger public occasions makes it a symbol of the established way of doing things rather than the radical and inclusive tool it once was.

References and further reading

Melvyn Bragg. William Tyndale: A very brief history. London: SPCK, 2017.

Brian Buxton. "William Tyndale in Gloucestershire". Transactions of the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 131 (2013): 189-198.

David Daniell. William Tyndale: A Biography. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1994.

The Tyndale Society. "William Tyndale's Life and Work". The Tyndale Society. Accessed May 30, 2023. http://www.tyndale.org/tyndale.htm

William Tyndale. The Obedience of a Christian Man. London: Penguin Books, 2000.

Roland Whitehead. "William Tyndale, Gloucester's Fame and England's Shame". The Tyndale Society. Accessed May 23, 2023. http://www.tyndale.org/tsj08/whitehead.html