‘When that was ended,’ says Tyndale, ‘I toke my leve and bode him farewel for oure two lives and, as men saye, a daye longer.’ Roy went to Strasburg, and there in 1528 printed his biting rimes against the English clergy.[1] I give an extract from page 71.
Alas, mate, all to geder is synne.
And wretchednes most miserable.
What! a man of religion
Is reputed a dedde person
To worldly conversacion.
Here we see that Religion still keeps its old sense of monkery; but Tyndale was bringing a new sense of the word into vogue among Englishmen.[2]
Roy talks of ‘wholy S. Fraunces’ (sanctus). We have been mercifully spared this corruption of the old English; wholly (integrè) is bad enough, with its useless first letter. He has both Christen and Christian, the old and the new form. His defoyle (page 113) shows how the French defouler became our defile. He still uses ryches as a noun singular; and he has per hapis (forsitan).
The translations of the Bible, put forth by Tyndale and Roy, slipped into many an out-of-the-way corner of England. Young Robert Plumpton, who was at the Temple about 1536, sends ‘the Newe Testament, which is the trewe Gospell of God,’ to his mother in her Yorkshire home. He says that he wishes not to bring her into any heresies. ‘Wherefore, I will never write nothing to you, nor saye nothinge to you, concerninge
