It’s hard for us to believe now what danger men in the past faced in order to translate the Bible into English. We take it for granted that we can read every line in our own language, but it was not always so, as will be shown in the following link:
http://www.historyextra.com/article/feature/murderous-history-bible-translations?utm_source=Facebook+referral&utm_medium=Facebook.com&utm_campaign=Bitly
Yes and the Theologia Germanica too…#
It was almost certainly the story of Wycliffe’s remains being thrown into the River Swift in Leicestershire that gave rise to the false story of Richard’s bones meeting the same fate in the Soar. A clear example of how history can become garbled then become myth.
Henry VII actually had an 80 year old woman burned for following Wycliffe’s ‘heresies’ but this seems to be seldom mentioned.
It is rather stretching credibility to blame Henry personally for the execution of Joan Boughton. Burning was the standard penalty for heresy and all she needed to do to avoid death was to recant. The law mentioned in the recent article about Colchester dates from Henry IV.
http://timesoftudors.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/joan-boughtons-painful-end.html?m=1
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I don’t believe the Plantagenets engaged in this kind of activity. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) And if Richard the Third had done something like this, I doubt anyone would have suggested the lady’s refusal to recant was a mitigating factor in her execution. It would simply have been added to all his other supposed murders.
Well, it counted among the 100,000 deaths Henry VII and his line caused either by execution or the killing of supposed rebels. Lancastrians executed people for heresy, having introduced the law in question (de heretico comburendo) to England. The “Tudors” followed it even more enthusiastically. The law was scarcely used under the Mortimer-York kings and the practice rarely followed before Henry IV’s time. As the article shows, John Wycliffe died of natural causes, under Richard II and Gaunt, before he was disinterred and posthumously burned under the Lancastrians.
In a case of heresy, the monarch actually needed to favour proceedings for a trial and execution to happen. If we were talking about Henry VI, it would be possible to excuse him up to 1437 when he achieved his majority by blaming his Protector in England and Regent in France. Secondly, he was feeble-minded in some way for his adult reign and had an official Protector or an unofficial one (his wife) for most of it.
Henry VII was not Henry VI. He was responsible for his actions and attempting to excuse him for this is highly disingenuous. “David” must be dizzy with all that desperate spinning.
At least Henry VIII was even-handed. He burned both Catholics and Protestants. He had invented a new religion – let’s call it’s Henricism – of which he was both Pope and Prophet. The only safe way was to believe exactly what he did. The only snag being that his beliefs changed quite regularly. So you had to keep your wits about you.
Most kings would have thought they’d done enough, fighting pointless, losing wars and debasing the currency by a significant amount despite having had more income than any previous English king. But no, what makes Henry VIII really great is that he invented his own religion at the same time and burned people for disagreeing with him.
Actually, when you think about it, the use of the Henry IV Statute was a huge irony. It was passed to defend the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Henry VIII, by kicking that Church into touch, was a huge heretic by the definition of that statute, as were all who supported him. To use that statute to punish people for questioning the religion he had invented, was really a bit rich. (No pun intended – Lord Rich?)
The Equal Opportunities Persecutor – might there be a post on that subject? 🙂
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Saved as a favorite, I like your site!
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[…] Many endured Hell to bring us the Bible in English…. […]
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