Publication of “Thomas Matthew’s” Bible. This Bible, printed in Antwerp less than a year after the martyrdom of Tyndale, was the first English Bible to be officially licensed for legal distribution in England. With his dying breath, Tyndale had prayed for the Lord to “open the King of England’s eyes.” Through the work of John Rogers (Thomas Matthew was a pseuodonym), his prayer was answered. Rogers, who would himself die as a martyr under Queen Mary, used Tyndale’s work for the New Testament and the Old Testament through II Chronicles—the first time that all of Tyndale’s translations from the the Greek and Hebrew had been gathered into one volume. For the remainder of the Old Testament, he revised Coverdale’s 1535 translation from the Latin. Though Rogers’ work is often forgotten today, it played a crucial role in the transformation of the England.
1537
