[Bedhead]

XIX – William Tyndale

There were plenty of martyrs during the reformation – choosing the wrong side between Catholics and Protestants made you both a hero and a traitor.

However, there was one man, William Tyndale, who managed to attract the hatred of both Catholics and Protestants. Despised by the Catholics for translating the Bible into English, he has wanted dead or alive by the Protestant Henry VIII for opposing his divorce to Catherine of Aragon. On the run from both, he was eventually captured near Brussels, strangled and burnt at the stake.

He did, however, come back from this low point. Eventually, his translation of the Bible formed the basis of the authorised, King James version, which was to have as profound an impact on English literature as any other book.

Unusually for a protestant, Tyndale gets his own statue in Westminster. He also appears on street signs all over London’s more modern residential developments, like this one in the Isle of Dogs: there’s nothing like a bit of history to make a place respectable.