“Dear Meg,” Sir Thomas wrote for the last time, “I never liked your manner better towards me than when you kissed me last.  For I like when daughterly love and dear charity hath no leisure to look to worldly courtesy.”

Next day he died cheerfully as he had lived.  To the last he jested in his quaint fashion.  The scaffold was so badly built that it was ready to fall, so Sir Thomas, jesting, turned to the lieutenant.  “I pray you, Master Lieutenant,” he said, “see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.”  He desired the people to pray for him, and having kissed the executioner in token of forgiveness, he laid his head upon the block.  “So passed Sir Thomas More out of the world to God.”  His death was mourned by many far and near.  “Had we been master of such a servant,” said the Emperor Charles when he heard of it, “we would rather have lost the best city of our dominions than have lost such a worthy counselor.”

More died for his faith, that of the Catholic Church.  He, as others, saw with grief that there was much within the Church that needed to be made better, but he trusted it would be made better.  To break away from the Church, to doubt the headship of the Pope, seemed to him such wickedness that he hated the Reformers and wrote against them.  And although in Utopia he allowed his happy people to have full freedom in matters of religion, in real life he treated sternly and even cruelly those Protestants with whom he had to deal.

Yet the Reformation was stirring all the world, and while Sir Thomas More cheerfully and steadfastly died for the Catholic faith, there were others in England who as cheerfully lived, worked, and died for the Protestant faith.  We have little to do with these Reformers in this book, except in so far as they touch our literature, and it is to them that we owe our present Bible.

First William Tyndale, amid difficulties and trials, translated afresh the New and part of the Old Testament, and died the death of a martyr in 1536.

Miles Coverdale followed him with a complete translation in happier times.  For Henry VIII, for his own purposes, wished to spread a knowledge of the Bible, and commanded that a copy of Coverdale’s Bible should be placed in every parish church.  And although Coverdale was not so great a scholar as Tyndale, his language was fine and stately, with a musical ring about the words, and to this day we still keep his version of the Psalms in the Prayer Book.

Other versions of the Bible followed these, until in 1611, in the reign of James I and VI, the translation which we use to-day was at length published.  That has stood and still stands the test of time.  And, had we no other reason to treasure it, we would still for its simple musical language look upon it as one of the fine things in our literature.

BOOKS TO READ

Life of Sir Thomas More (King’s Classics, modern English), by W. Roper (his son-in-law).  Utopia (King’s Classics, modern English), translated by R. Robinson.  Utopia (old English), edited by Churton Collins.