William Tyndale

William Tyndale (1494 – 6 October 1536) was a translator of the Bible into English. He was influenced by the works of Erasmus of Rotterdam and Martin Luther. His translation was the first English Bible to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek texts. In 1536, he was convicted of heresy and executed by strangulation. His dying prayer was that the King of England’s eyes would be opened.

About William Tyndale in brief

Summary William TyndaleWilliam Tyndale (1494 – 6 October 1536) was a translator of the Bible into English. He was influenced by the works of Erasmus of Rotterdam and Martin Luther. His translation was the first English Bible to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek texts. It was taken to be a direct challenge to the hegemony of both the Catholic Church and the laws of England maintaining the church’s position. In 1536, he was convicted of heresy and executed by strangulation, after which his body was burnt at the stake. His dying prayer was that the King of England’s eyes would be opened. His work continued to play a key role in spreading Reformation ideas across the English-speaking world and eventually across the British Empire. In 2002, Tyndal was placed 26th in the BBC’s poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. He is recorded as having been the brother of Sir William of Deane, who was a tenant-in-chief of Henry I of Wales, and Hockwold, who married Catherine of Aragon. He also went by the name Hychyns, and was enrolled at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, as a sub-deacon in 1506. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1512, becoming a Protestant martyr during the Persecutions of the Marian martyr Rowland Taylor, a martyr burnt to death in the same year. His brother Edward was receiver to the Lord Berkeley of Lord Berkeley, attested to in a letter by Bishop Stokesley of London, in two in two years after the Wars of the Roses.

His niece Margaret Tyndales was married to Protestant martyr William Rowland, a tenant in chief of King Henry I, in 1516. He died in 1536 and is buried in St Paul’s Cathedral, London. His body is now displayed in a private museum in the town of St Pancras, where he was once a member of the Knights of St John of the Cross. His family moved to Gloucestershire at some point in the 15th century, probably as a result of the wars of the Rose, and his brother Edward is said to have been the receiver to Lord Berkeley in two two years before his death in 1520. He had a son, William, who became a bishop in 1530. His daughter, Margaret, was married in 1535 to the Protestant martyr Rowan Taylor, who later became a Catholic martyr in the Second World War. His grandson, William Tyndall, was also a bishop, and died in the First World War in the Battle of the Bulge. His great-great-grandson, William Tindall, is now a headmaster at the University of Oxford. He has a great-nephew, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is also known as the Bishop of Bath and Wells. He wrote The Obedience of a Christian Man, which some claim or interpret to argue that the king of a country should be the head of that country’s church rather than the pope.