" The story of the burning of the translation of
the New Testament at St. Paul's Cross by Bishop Tunstall, of the same
bishop's purchase of a "heap of the books" for the same charitable
purpose, thereby furnishing Tyndale with means for providing another
edition and for printing his translation of the Pentateuch, all this is a
thrice-told tale. Nor need we record the account of the conspiracy which
sealed his doom. For sixteen months he was imprisoned in the Castle of
Vilvoord, and we find him petitioning for some warm clothing and "for a
candle in the evening, for it is wearisome to sit alone in the dark," and
above all for his Hebrew Bible, Grammar, and Dictionary, that he might
spend his time in that study. After a long dreary mockery of a trial on
October 16th, 1536, he was chained to a stake with faggots piled around
him. "As he stood firmly among the wood, with the executioner ready to
strangle him, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and cried with a fervent
zeal and loud voice, 'Lord, open the King of England's eyes!' and then,
yielding himself to the executioner, he was strangled, and his body
immediately consumed." That same year, by the King's command, the first
edition of the Bible was published in London. If Tyndale had confined
himself to the great work of translating the Scriptures, and had abandoned
controversy and his _Practice of Prelates_, his fate might have been
different; but, as Mr.
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