therein; and shall discourage no man from | Then I came among the said readers to hear reading any part, but rather comfort, exhort, their reading of that glad and sweet tidings of

and admonish every man to read the same, as the very word of God and the spiritual food of man's soul." According to Anderson, "the largest volume" referred to in this order was Matthew's (i. e., Tyndale's,) and certainly of the editions then issued this was the largest, being two inches taller than Coverdale's; but Mr. Fry conjectures that as the limited impression (one thousand five hundred only) would have been insufficient for the purpose, the order must have referred to the "Great Bible," then being printed, and which was actually issued during the following year.

By this time the number of persons able to read was not a few, so that it is not difficult to realize what is said by Strype, on the authority of a contemporaneous document,-"It was wonderful to see with what joy this Book of God was received, not only among the learneder sort, but generally all England over, among all the vulgar and common people; and with what greediness God's Word was read, and what resort to places where the reading of it was. Everybody that could, bought the book, or busily read it, or got others to read it to them if they could not read it themselves. Divers more elderly people learned to read on purpose; and even little boys flocked among the rest to hear portions of the Holy Scriptures read." Turning aside into one of the many by-ways of History a curious domestic incident appears. It is a pointed illustration of Strype's general

statement.

the Gospel. Then my father seeing this, that I listened to them every Sunday, came and sought me among them and brought me away and would have me to say the Latin matins with him, the which grieved me very much; and thus did fetch me away divers times. Then thought I, 'I will learn to read English, and then will I have the New Testament and read therein myself;' and then had I learned of an English (Latin?) primer as far as Patris sapien tia, and then on Sundays I plied my English primer. The May-tide following, I and my father's apprentice, Thomas Jeffrey, laid our money together and bought the New Testament in English and hid it in our bed-straw, and so exercised it at convenient times. ... Then shortly after I would begin to speak of the Scriptures, and on a night about eight o'clock my father sat sleeping in a chair, and my mother and I fell on reasoning of the crucifix and of the kneeling down to it and knocking on the breast and holding up our hands to it when it came by in procession. Then said I,-'It is plain idolatry, and plainly against the commandment of God.' Then said she,-'Thou thief! if thy father knew this he would hang thee. Wilt not thou worship the cross? and it was about thee when thou wert christened, and must be laid on thee when thou art dead;' with other talk. Then I went and hid Frith's book on the Sacrament, and then I went to bed. And then my father awaked and my mother told him of our communication. Then came he up to our chamber with a great rod, and as I heard him coming up I blessed me, saying,-'In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of

Among the Harleian MSS. (590, fol. 77) there is a narrative written by William Maldon, of Chelmsford, in a hand superior to that of many persons of that time, which, although, the Holy Ghost, so be it!' Then said my father primarily revealing the ordinary case of an arbitrary and passionate parent exceeding the bounds of just discipline and defeating his object by undue violence, yet incidentally furnishes characteristics of the manners of the times, particularly among the humbler ranks of the early Protestants. The description of their flocking to hear the Scriptures read when first promulgated in the mother-tongue, is especially remarkable. The narrator says,-"I was about twenty years of age when the Bible was set forth to be read in all churches in England by the late worthy king Henry the Eighth, and immediately after divers poor men in the town of Chelmsford (where my father dwelt, and I born, and with him brought up) on Sundays did sit reading in lower end of the church, and many would flock about them to hear their reading.

to me,-'Sirrah! who is your schoolmaster? tell me.' 'Forsooth, father,' said I. I have no schoolmaster but God, where he saith,"Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, thou shalt not bow down to it, nor worship it." Then he took me by the hair of my head, with both his hands, pulled me ont of the bed behind Thomas Jeffrey's back, he sitting up in bed. Then he bestowed his rod on my body and still would know my schoolmaster; and other than I said before he had none of me. And he said I spake against the king's injunctions; and as truly as the Lord liveth I rejoiced that I was beaten for Christ's sake, and wept not one tear out of my eyes, and I think I felt not the stripes, my rejoicing was so much. And then my father saw that when he had beaten me enough he let me go,