as the most experienced translator of the time and the best scholar available. Coverdale used his own Bible published in Antwerp in 1535, Tyndale’s New Testament and Pentateuch, and the new Matthew Bible translated by John Rogers as the basis for the new edition. He added a flattering dedication to King Henry VIII and omitted prologues and annotations. Cromwell ordered all bishops to have an English Bible conveniently located in each of their churches and to discourage no one from reading it.

King Henry licensed Coverdale and the printer Richard Grafton to provide this official Bible to be published in Paris, where better paper and type and more skilled workmen were to be found. Henry asked and received for the project a Royal License from the French king. Even so, the printers in Paris were harassed, and in December, 1538, the French Inquisitor General halted the printing. Coverdale fled to England, and twenty-five completed Bibles were seized by French church officials. Coverdale and the English printers then exported the necessary type, printers, and paper to London, and in April, 1539, the Great Bible was finally distributed as the official edition to be used in all English churches.

Once again, English politics intervened. Anne Boleyn fell from favor, and Henry’s Protestant wife Jane Seymour died in childbirth. The conservative bishops and Parliament issued the Six Articles in June, 1539, inaugurating a new wave of Protestant persecution. On July 28, 1540, Barnes was burned for his religious beliefs; on July 30, Cromwell himself was beheaded. Coverdale for the second time fled to Strasbourg in Germany with other English Protestants. Nevertheless, churches continued to be required to provide Bibles and by 1541, seven editions had been printed.

Shortly after leaving England, Coverdale married Elizabeth Macheson, whose sister had married Dr. Joannes Macchabaeus MacAlpinus, another religious exile, who was a cleric in the service of the King of Denmark and assisted with the translation of the Bible into Danish. In 1541 or 1542, Coverdale received his own doctor of divinity degree at Tübingen and, on the recommendation of Conrad Hubert, secretary of the great Protestant reformer Martin Bucer, he was named assistant minister and headmaster of the school at Bergzabern in the Rhineland. His assistance was a godsend to the head pastor, who wrote letters full of appreciation for Coverdale’s piety, hard work, and scrupulous performance of his religious duties. Although Coverdale was shocked by the frivolous public dances of the townspeople and their irreverent behavior during divine services, he enjoyed his work. He begged money from friends to pay school fees for poor children and arranged for jobs in nearby churches and schools for fellow English exiles. Coverdale preferred exile with the people of God to living a life of compromise and hypocrisy in his native land. Meanwhile, in England in 1543, King Henry ordered all Bibles to be burned, and in 1546 Bishop Bonner burned Coverdale’s books.

On March 26, 1548, several months after King Henry VIII had died and Edward VI had become king of England, Coverdale returned from exile. Edward’s advisers revived Henry’s early efforts toward reform and began to incorporate more of the ideas of Martin Luther and John Calvin. They recognized that Coverdale’s goals were the same as theirs and named him to a post as royal chaplain. Serving also as almoner to the dowager queen, Catherine Parr, Henry’s last wife, Coverdale wrote a dedication to a new English translation of Erasmus’ Latin paraphrases of the Bible. When Queen Catherine died in September, 1548, Coverdale preached her funeral sermon.

In the early summer of 1549, Coverdale served as preacher to Lord John Russell on a military expedition to Devon and Cornwall to quell a rebellion against the new prayer book. When Russell had completed his task, Coverdale remained to pacify the people and return Protestant practice to the churches. Coverdale’s loyalty and competence were rewarded by Northumberland in August, 1551, when Bishop John Veysey, whose sympathies were not with the Reformation, was ejected from office and Coverdale was appointed as the new bishop of Exeter. As bishop, Coverdale was charged with restoring property to Exeter, with enforcing Protestant practices in his churches, and with serving in the House of Lords. Coverdale and his wife were without question good and holy Christians, but Protestant supporters noted that the common people, still Roman Catholic at heart, would not accept him because he was a married man preaching the gospel. Despite this stubborn opposition, Coverdale continued to preach and carry out the duties of his office until Mary Tudor became queen in July, 1553, after Edward’s death. Within a month after her accession to the throne, Coverdale was under house arrest, and in September, Veysey—now eighty-eight—was reinstated as Bishop of Exeter.

Mary Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, did not make substantial changes in religion immediately. She did not ban the English Bible or order public burnings of it until 1556. Nevertheless, Coverdale had no doubts about her power or her intentions. Prepared to die for his faith, he was determined not to recant, go into exile again, or consent to do anything contrary to his beliefs in order to stay alive. He even added his name to a Protestant statement of belief written by twelve of his imprisoned brethren.

For more than a year, Coverdale remained under house arrest although not in the Tower. His wife’s brother-in-law, the Reverend J. Macchabaeus MacAlpinus, enlisted the help of the King of Denmark, who wrote a series of letters to Queen Mary demanding Coverdale’s release. Finally, in 1555, Mary issued Coverdale a passport. For the third time, Coverdale and his wife left England, this time for Denmark en route to the village of Bergzabern, where Coverdale spent the next two years teaching. His last years in exile were spent in Switzerland, first at Aarau and then in Geneva, where he stood as godfather to John Knox’s son.

Queen Mary died in December, 1558, unable to restore her people’s allegiance to the pope and unable to secure the throne with an heir. The following year, Coverdale, aged seventy-one, returned once again with his family to England.

In exile, Coverdale had become more puritanical in the practice of his religion. At the consecration of Archbishop Matthew Parker in 1559, when other returned Protestant clergy wore Anglican vestments, Coverdale insisted on wearing a plain black suit and hat. He refused to resume his place as Bishop of Exeter. It was not inability or timidity that kept him from the ministry, it was his age and his reluctance to participate in the rituals that were part of Queen Elizabeth’s religious compromise. Finally in 1565, his friend the Bishop of London succeeded in getting him to accept a living at St. Magnus Church near London Bridge.

Coverdale preached at St. Magnus until Elizabeth ordered uniformity of practice among pastors—uniformity that included the dress they wore in the pulpit. Coverdale and several Puritan colleagues asked the queen to excuse them from wearing vestments. When the request was denied, Coverdale resigned his church. He continued to preach and to attract a following of Elizabethan Puritans who wanted less ritual and more Calvinism in their worship.

Coverdale died on January 20, 1568. His last sermon was preached in early January at the Church of the Holy Trinity in the Minories, a church which before the Reformation had been associated with the Augustinian friars—Coverdale’s earliest religious home.

Summary

Miles Coverdale died protesting the royal religious policy, not violently but quietly, as he had lived most of his life. In contrast to other reformers of the period, Coverdale was moderate and accommodating. Because he was not shrill or dogmatic, he succeeded in getting royal approval for his Bible where Tyndale and others had failed. Coverdale’s patient hard work, his modesty and overriding concern that all English people have immediate access to the Scriptures, disarmed even his most conservative critics. The omission of commentary, prologues, and annotations illustrates his faith in each person’s ability to interpret the Bible.

Although Coverdale was less learned than Tyndale, he was more adept at writing smooth prose and poetry with an ear for the musical qualities of a sentence. Indeed, the Church of England had continued to use Coverdale’s translations of the Psalms in the Psalter. Coverdale’s English Bible was written for all people. Clear, graceful, free of Latinisms and learned jargon, it is a valuable heirloom of the English Reformation.

Bibliography

Bruce, F. F. The English Bible: A History of Translations from the Earliest English Versions to the New English Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. One of the most recent histories of Bible translations, it is easier to read than Westcott’s study (see below) but less rich in stories and not as well documented. The focus is on literary comparison.

Clebsch, William A. England’s Earliest Protestants, 1520-1535. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964. An excellent description of intellectual life in England as new Renaissance ideas about scholarship and religion seeped in before Henry VIII began to reform the church. Although Coverdale is seldom mentioned, this book is about people with whom he lived and worked.

Collinson, Patrick. The Elizabethan Puritan Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. Well-documented account of the radical Protestant Elizabethan church. Collinson includes interesting stories regarding acts of civil disobedience committed by sixteenth century Puritan clergy. Since Coverdale died just as the Puritans were beginning to voice their views, it is more valuable for the atmosphere of England at this time than for information about him.

Dickens, A. G. The English Reformation. New York: Schocken Books, 1964. A general survey of the English Reformation concentrating on its effect on ordinary men and women. Well written and documented, this work emphasizes religion, not politics.

Dickens, A. G. Thomas Cromwell and the English Revolution. London: The English Universities Press, 1959. One of several excellent short general works about the English Reformation and Cromwell’s role in it. Discusses the relationship between Cromwell and Coverdale, and Cromwell’s support for the Great Bible.

Mozley, James Frederick. Coverdale and His Bibles. London: Lutterworth Press, 1953. The standard biography. Although the focus is on Coverdale’s writings, this book includes the most recent information about Coverdale’s personal life. Presents Coverdale’s best side.

Mozley, James Frederick. William Tyndale. New York: Macmillan, 1937. An outdated and almost undocumented biography of the man who taught Coverdale his life’s work. Tyndale’s independence and dignity are compared to Coverdale’s “overstrained humility,” but this is a valuable corrective to Mozley’s hagiography of Coverdale.

Westcott, Brooke Foss. A General View of the History of the English Bible. 3d ed. Revised by William Aldis Wright. New York: Macmillan, 1927. Although old, this well-documented and carefully annotated study is a valuable standard work. Based on letters and contemporary observations, it includes many stories about the early writers of the English Bible.