William Tyndale by David Daniell

Author:David Daniell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300061321
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2017-02-21T05:00:00+00:00

At this point the manuscript breaks off.

It has been argued that Henry was exceedingly angry, to the point of tearing the paper so that there is no more. That is fanciful. As it happens, there is enough remaining to be convincing. Vaughan was impressed, and took his work seriously enough to take pains to remember what was said. The long speech of Tyndale which makes most of the first paragraph rings true in tone and content, even to making a sort of tape-recording of the occasion. Vaughan's reply to Tyndale's ‘Do you not know me?’ is, rather than a blunt ‘No. Who are you?’, a successful merchant's diplomatic ‘I do not well remember you’, a courteous social shorthand which authenticates what follows. A late twentieth-century reader might think the long record of his speech incredible, though it does breathe the authentic voice of Tyndale himself. Such a reader would probably have difficulty in remembering yesterday's newspaper headline, so bombarded are our waking hours with unrelated fragments of information. The arts of memory were taught in schools and perfected in universities as part of rhetoric, particularly relating to whole speeches, as in, for example, the methods of Cicero. We might recall that Hamlet, a member of the new university of Wittenberg—not even yet a graduate, as he has been forbidden to return—had no difficulty in accurately recalling from a speech heard ‘once’ (which implies some time ago), on only one occasion, a dozen lines of rich verse.121

That letter reveals a grave, greatly thoughtful, careful, consciously powerful man who is about the highest business, that of opening the King of England's eyes. We owe to Stephen Vaughan almost the only glimpse of him, and we must be grateful. Cromwell's reply, dated sometime in May, shows signs of uncharacteristic agitation. It is most unusually full of crossings-out, insertions above the line and underlinings, and shows the marks of interference. It must have been difficult reading for Vaughan in several senses. His own letter had conveyed a sense of some triumph, and he might have hoped to be congratulated. As it was, Cromwell in his long letter can be watched struggling with the words to express the King's great anger. He found the book

filled with seditious slanderous lies and fantastical opinions … replete with so abominable slanders and lies imagined and only fained to infect and intoxicate as it seemeth the people … the king's highness therefore hath commanded me to advertise you that his pleasure is that you should desist and leave any further to persuade or attempt the said Tyndale to come into this realm … [he] is very joyous to have his realm destitute of such a person…122

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