Tyndale and British Lit

The yeoman class continued to grow in wealth and landholdings up through the 17th century.  At this point many yeoman farmers had their own servants and enough landholdings to lease to gentleman and others of the noble class.  However, the cost to purchase patronage was so expensive that most yeoman farmers remained commoners, which lead to a sizeable middle class.  These were the first land-owning small farmers who could support themselves but were not part of the nobility.  Soon the work of John Wycliffe would be picked up again, which further educated these middle class farmers.

William Tyndale was born in Wales in the 1490s and attended Oxford while still a teenager.  While attending the university Tyndale became familiar with the arguments of both Martin Luther and Erasmus, and could argue their cases from Scripture.  Tyndale would argue tenants of the Reformation before the local priests, who were ashamed by this young man's knowledge and study.  Their resentment led to plot against him with a charge of heresy, so Tyndale fled the country, heading to London, then Germany (where he met Luther), and finally to The Netherlands.  Tyndale saw that many problems in the church were tied to the fact that the common people couldn't read God's Word for themselves.  As both a Greek and Hebrew scholar, Tyndale set to work on translating the Bible from the original languages, unlike Wycliffe's reliance upon the Latin Vulgate for translation.  Foxe says that Tyndale knew, "if the Scripture were turned into the vulgar speech, that the poor people might read and see the simple plain Word of God."  Since Tyndale was working after the invention of the printing press, his work was readily available to the common man.

After his martyrdom in 1536, Tyndale's Bible translation did arguably more to educate the yeoman class than anything else in British history.  The common people were equipped, literally and theologically, to be not only a part of the coming religious reformation, but of the entire literary work of 17th century England, from the King James Bible to Shakespeare, which was largely done by the common people.  Within only a couple of generations Tyndale's vision for the British people would be realized when he stated, "If God spares my life, ere many years I would cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of Scripture than I do."