Page:History of england froude.djvu/530

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508
REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH
[ch. 6.

Jerusalem, proceeded the light of evangelical truth, to spread thence to the utmost parts of the earth.'[1] Thither came young Patrick Hamilton from Edinburgh, whose 'reek' was of so much potency, a boy-enthusiast of nature as illustrious as his birth; and thither came also from England, which is here our chief concern, William Tyndal, a man whose history is lost in his work, and whose epitaph is the Reformation. Beginning life as a restless Oxford student, he moved thence to Cambridge, thence to Gloucestershire, to be tutor in a knight's family, and there hearing of Luther's doings, and expressing himself with too warm approval to suit the clergy of the neighbourhood,[2] he was obliged to fly. From Gloucestershire he removed to London, where Cuthbert Tunstall had lately been made bishop, and from whom he perhaps looked for countenance in an intention to translate the New Testament. Tunstall showed little encouragement to this enterprise; but a better friend rose where he was least looked for; and a London alderman, Humfrey Monmouth by name, hearing the fiery young enthusiast preach on some occasion at St Dunstan's, took him to his home for half a year, and kept him there: where 'the said Tyndal,' as the alderman declared, 'lived like a good priest, studying both night and day; he would eat but sodden meat, by his good will, nor drink but small single beer; nor was he ever seen to wear linen about him all the time of his being there.'[3] The half-year being passed, Monmouth gave him ten pounds,

  1. Michelet, Life of Luther, p. 41.
  2. Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses.
  3. Foxe, vol. iv. p. 618.