William Tyndale

Born in Gloucestershire around 1494, William Tyndale studied at Oxford and later at Cambridge before becoming one of the great Bible translators of the Reformation. Convinced that ordinary people should be able to read scripture in their own language, he set out to translate the Bible into English from Greek and Hebrew rather than from the traditional Latin text.

Because this work was fiercely opposed in England, Tyndale lived and worked in exile on the Continent. His English New Testament was printed in the 1520s and secretly carried into England, where it spread widely despite official bans. He also translated parts of the Old Testament and wrote religious works that argued for reform.

Tyndale was eventually arrested in the Low Countries, tried for heresy, and executed in 1536. Though he did not live to finish his full translation, his wording had a lasting influence on later English Bibles, including the King James Version, and his life remains closely tied to the story of religious reform, print culture, and the fight to make books available to ordinary readers.