by Val Ross
Tyndale kept slipping away from the king’s agents’ nets. Hunted across Northern Europe, he was shielded by people willing to risk their lives so he could write his books. Some merchants gave him a safe, warm place to study and work; others kept an eye out for church agents; still others smuggled his books back to England, hidden amid heaps of skins, or tucked away in false bottoms of crates. In England, Sir Thomas More kept building bonfires of these Bibles, and publishing whole books attacking Tyndale, comparing his writings to the plague. Yet despite More’s best efforts – or maybe because of the attention – more English people read Tyndale’s works, and more sent money.
And all the time Tyndale was in hiding, he kept up his work of translating, writing, and being published. He even published his translation, from the Hebrew, of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses in the Old Testament, This was a job he loved; “The properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more with the English than with the Latin,” he wrote.
Finally, in 1536, in Belgium, the hunt ended. Ignoring warnings, Tyndale went one night to meet an Englishman named Phillips who had pretended to be his friend. It was a trap. The fugitive priest walked straight into the arms of soldiers waiting to arrest him. He was taken to Vilvoorde Castle, near Brussels, Despite the appeals of his many admirers in England and Northern Europe, Tyndale was executed.
Back in England, that same year, Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded on orders of King Henry, who’d decided he wanted to marry Wife Number Three (he would have six wives in all). As for Tyndale’s old enemy Sir Thomas More, he had publicly contradicted the king when Henry claimed to be the final authority on royal marriage, More’s head had been chopped off too.
When printing first came to Europe, church leaders had hoped that mass-produced Bibles and other religious texts would bring people together. And they did – but not by ensuring that all readers believed the same thing. Rather, printed books led to standard rules of grammar, spelling, and vocabulary, so people could better express all the ways they disagreed with one another.
The great English books printed in the 1500s and early 1600s, including Utopia and William Shakespeare’s plays, helped shape the English language. Tyndale’s Bible was one of those language-shaping books. It introduced to the English language words that we now all know, such as “Passover” and “peacemaker,” “scapegoat” and “long-suffering.” Here’s another word the long-suffering priest seems to have invented for his English Bible, for it occurs in no book published before Tyndale: “beautiful.”
Tyndale’s death as depicted in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. John Foxe, a Protestant, fled to Switzerland to escape a similar fate at the hands of English Catholic authorities. He didn’t return until the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558.
Seven decades after Tyndale’s death, another English monarch, King James I, authorized a new translation of the Bible. The men who produced the King James Version turned to the translations of William Tyndale. It is estimated that as much as 80 percent of the King James Bible – the Bible most English-speaking Christians would rely on for the next four hundred years – is based on the words of William Tyndale, whose Book of Genesis – in its original odd-seeming spelling – begins: “In the beginnyng, God created heauen and erth. The erth was voyde and empty, and darckness was vpon the depe, and the spirit of God moued vpon the water.”
The Cousins and the Code
WHEN TEXTS ARE written in code, they can only be read by someone with the key. With enough time and ingenuity, though, a good code-breaker can usually discover that key.
t was June 1586, and for the first time in many years the pale face of Mary, Queen of Scots, looked happy and hopeful. Although the Catholic queen was being held prisoner at Chartley Hall, a stately home deep in the English countryside, her friends had smuggled her a letter in code from people in London and France who supported her cause. After her private secretary, Claude Nau, decoded the letter, which was in English, he read it to her in French – Mary always felt far more at home in French than in English or Scots English. On hearing the message, for a brief spring afternoon the prisoner queen allowed herself to dream.
Mary dreamed she would be able to escape the house arrest imposed by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England – daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and now head of the Church of England. Mary dreamed of a mighty army coming from a Catholic nation to rescue her and place her on the throne of England, so she could make the country Catholic once again.
Mary had become Queen of Scotland upon her father’s death, when she was just six days old. She was the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s sister, and her cousin Elizabeth was Henry’s last surviving child. If something happened to Elizabeth, Mary had the best claim to the throne. As it turned out, Elizabeth did die childless, and Mary’s son became King James I of England.
The letter that arrived that June day was from a handsome, rich, daring young London merchant named Anthony Babington. Like Mary, Queen of Scots, Babington was a committed Catholic, and like Mary, he wanted to restore England to the Catholic Church. His letter reported that Spain would support Mary’s claim to the throne. It spoke of plans to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.
Babington’s recklessness, Mary knew, could get all the plotters into deadly trouble. But she felt confident that her cipher (code) could not be broken. Carefully she dictated her reply, in French, indicating that she was ready to go ahead. Her secretary translated the letter into English and then into the queen’s special cipher.
This code looked like no known language. For the letter A there was a circle; B was a sideways H, C was a wedge, D looked like a picket fence. There were twenty-three letter symbols, plus thirty-six symbols representing frequently used words such as “send” and “with.” Just to be sure the coded letter did not fall into the wrong hands, Nau sealed it in a watertight packet and hid it in a cask of beer. The barrel was shipped to London.
Mary wrote her letter on June 25. Babington did not receive it until July 6. In between, the unthinkable happened. Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I’s Principal Secretary – and spymaster – had been waiting to pounce on the Queen of Scots. His agents found the beer cask and intercepted the letter. Then Walsingham passed it to Thomas Phelippes, a genius at cryptanalysis (code-breaking).
Phelippes didn’t look very impressive – he was of “low stature … eaten in the face with smallpox.” But he was patient and clever.
To break the code, he used “frequency analysis.” After determining which letters occurred most frequently in typical sentences, he checked which symbols were used most frequently in the code. For example, in English the letter E occurs more than twelve times for every hundred letters. T is likely to turn up at least nine times for every hundred letters, A eight times, and so on. Late into the night Phelippes kept at it, doggedly, patiently substituting the most frequent letters for the most frequent code signs – until at last words started to make sense.
It was only a matter of days. As soon as Phelippes could read Mary’s letter, and understood that the prisoner queen had approved an assassination plot against Elizabeth, he went to Sir Francis Walsingham.
Walsingham could have arrested Mary on the spot. Instead, he decided to trap as many of the conspirators as possible. He let the letter go through to Babington, who wrote Mary back.
Mary’s next letter to be sent by beer-cask delivery was also intercepted. This time, Mary asked the plotters not to murder Elizabeth until Mary herself had safely escaped, so no one would take revenge on her. When Phelippes read this letter, he drew a little gallows as a sign to his master.
Sir Francis Walsingham’s spies not only helped trap Mary, Queen of Scots; they also reported that Spain was planning to launch its Armada (a fleet of ships) to invade England in 1587. England was therefore prepared for the attack, and sent out small, fast fighting ships to set fire to the large, cumbersome Spanish vessels.
Yet Walsingham was still not ready to act. He knew that Phelippes, a man of many st
range and unsavory talents, was also a master forger, so he told him to add a fake postscript to the letter – in Mary’s secret code, of course – asking Babington for more details. It read, “I would be glad to know the names and qualities of the six gentlemen which are to accomplish this designment … for it may be that I shall be able, upon knowledge of the parties, to give you some further advice….” Then this letter too was resealed, put back in the beer cask, and sent on its way.
Babington replied to the doctored letter, never suspecting a thing. Following what he believed were Mary’s orders, he sent her, in code, all the names he thought she had asked for. Now Walsingham was satisfied.
Queen Elizabeth had no choice when faced with all the evidence Walsingham presented to her. Mary was found guilty of treason. The English queen postponed her execution several times – Elizabeth had a horror of beheadings, since her own mother had lost her head to the axeman – but eventually she ordered her cousin’s death.
Mary, Queen of Scots, was very dignified as she walked to her beheading. Her ladies-in-waiting walked beside her, and her dog, too. After the beheading, the little dog refused to leave Mary’s body. Elizabeth is said to have cried when she heard the news of Mary’s execution. But after all, Mary had been plotting to do the same thing to her. Besides, Elizabeth had promised to protect her country against foreign powers. And – who knows? – the plot might have succeeded, but for the work of Tom Phelippes, a man who refused to accept that there was any code that could not be broken – or anything that could not be read.
Books Not to be Read
SOONER OR LATER, we come across a book that
n a long summer day around the year 1620, three boys – Big Magnus, Little Bogi, and their friend Eirikur, the cleverest, bravest boy in all Iceland – went searching for a book of magic. In those days, most boys their age in mainland Europe could not even read, but in Iceland, isolated in the midst of the North Atlantic, learning and writing were prized. On long winter nights, when the darkness closed in and the sheep huddled in the barns and the fishing boats stayed in port, there wasn’t much to do but sit with a book by the fire.
Iceland became Christian in the year 1030, but for years it had a kind of Christianity that would have shocked people in mainland Europe. Icelanders tolerated people who kept alive the old pagan ways, who made herbal potions or chanted spells calling on the power of the Norse gods. By 1600 the Church got more strict about these pagan remnants, and possessing a book of sorcery was punishable by death. Yet even church leaders themselves were curious about those old ways.
In Iceland, summer night skies stay light, so Bogi, Magnus, and Eirikur weren’t worried about darkness overtaking them as they set off across the hilly meadows. They were determined to find the magic book Raudskinna – Redskin – said to have been buried along with its owner, a strange old man who had lived alone with his cow, and who might have practiced the ancient ways.
“I’ve heard this book Raudskinna was written at the Black School,” Eirikur told his friends.
“What was the Black School?”
“A place where wizards studied long ago,” Eirikur replied over his shoulder. “There were no teachers … the students just said what they wanted to learn, and then they would enter a dark room, or maybe a cave. It was so dark they couldn’t see anything – until books appeared, written in fiery red letters. The students had no other light, just letters lit from within.”
Bogi the curious asked, “Reading in the darkness?”
Big Magnus pushed him violently. “You fool! They were magicians!”
But Eirikur had another explanation. “Everyone who is ignorant reads in darkness. Then they become … enlightened.”
At last Eirikur stopped by the entrance to an old churchyard. The tombstones cast long shadows in the mauve evening light. Bogi shuddered, and Magnus said softly, “Maybe we should not be looking for this book.”
But Eirikur was full of daring. “What if the book is real?” he said. “What if it has power, knowledge that we can use to do good – find lost sheep, foretell storms, stop fishermen from getting drowned at sea …?” Pushing on into the churchyard, he scanned the tombstones, looking for the hermit’s grave.
Suddenly Magnus cried out. Someone was approaching: a stranger with hollow eyes, leading a cow on a rope. Under his arm was a huge book bound in red leather.
“!”breathed Eirikur.
“Here,” said the old man, with a strange smile. Giving Eirikur the book, he melted away into the deepening shadows.
The Enchanter Merlin (imagined here by the American, artist Howard Pyle) was the powerful adviser to the legendary King Arthur. Merlin’s personal book of magic was said to have been passed on to other wizards, and is itself the subject of poems and stories.
The boys wrapped themselves in cloaks of animal skins and tried to keep warm as Eirikur read in the twilit northern night, page by page-Finally the sky began to brighten again. “Morning?” asked Bogi, shivering.
Eirikur looked up. He was just coming to the last pages. He slammed the book shut and looked around.
The old man had come back. He was smiling.
Eirikur thrust the red-covered book at him. “Take it!” he cried.
The old man’s smile dropped away. He looked shocked, as if Eirikur had denied him some prize. Furiously he tucked away the old book. Then he seemed to vanish.
Eirikur was very quiet, and he let Big Magnus lead the way home. The three boys walked in silence. Finally Bogi could no longer help himself. “What did you read?” he blurted.
“Just enough,” Eirikur told him. “Enough to know that if I had read any further, I would have lost my soul to the Devil.”
There are many versions of the story of the magic book Raudskinna and Eirikur, a real person who lived in the 1600s and later became a famous Christian bishop. What really happened in Eirikur’s search for knowledge, we have no way of knowing. But the legend of Raudskinna is not only a version of the struggle between Iceland’s old religion and the new; it is also a way of telling of each reader’s struggle to judge whether the contents of a book are evil or useful.
This struggle has gone on since the dawn of the written word. In 1559, just before the time of Eirikur, the Vatican issued its Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Catholic Church’s official list of forbidden books. On the list were Martin Luther and William Tyndale, and books thought to contain magic. One, The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus, was actually just a collection of herbal remedies compiled by a helpful monk around 1250. But by 1605 those herbal remedies looked like satanic potions, and The Book of Secrets went on the index.
The Index Librorum Prohibitorum listed books that Catholics were not supposed to read. Of course, for some people this only made those books more tempting. There was also an Index Expurgatorius, which listed books that Catholics could only read if certain passages were changed or deleted.
Even in our own time, some people fear that books about magic really have some unhealthy power. J.K. Rowling’s story of a student wizard, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, has had the weird distinction of being the most challenged book in library and public school collections in the United States. In Canada, after an uproar at the Durham Region School Board near Toronto, school officials sent home consent forms for parents to sign before their children could open a copy of Harry Potter.
We should take the censors seriously. Of course, they are wrong to fear Harry Potter, who, after all, is a good person who stands by his friends and tries to defeat evil. But the censors are right to respect the power of books, and to remind us all that books contain forces we may not fully appreciate. Ultimately, though, each reader – like young Eirikur – has a responsibility to know when to shut the covers.
That Dreadful Mr. Shakespeare
THE JOKES PEOPLE laughed at two hundred years ago would shock us now
. But we find it funny to look at what they found shocking – and what they tried to prevent other people from reading.
y 1790, the majority of the people in England could read and write. This meant that strange and upsetting ideas were within their grasp. Farmers and tradespeople were reading newspapers and books about revolutions in the United States and France, and about how the French had chopped off the head of their king. Women were opening romantic novels and discovering new ideas about love and marriage. A few were even reading feminist books like Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women.
As for children, who knew what mischievous ideas they were picking up from books?
One of the world’s first stores to sell children’s and family books had opened in London in 1744, at the east end of St. Paul’s Churchyard. The man who owned this store was also a publisher, John Newbery (an American children’s book prize, the Newbery Medal, is named after him). Newbery designed books especially for children, on sturdy paper with pleasing illustrations, books that he sold with the promise that they would “make Thomas a good boy and Polly a good girl.”
Mary Lamb, the writer who fatally stabbed her mother in a fit of insanity. She and her brother worked together to write Mrs. Leicester’s School, and collections of stories for children, as well as Tales from Shakespear.
One of Newbery’s most popular books was Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s Lessons for Children, which told young readers: “Do you know why you are better than Puss? Puss can play as well as you … she can run as fast as you, and faster, too, a great deal But can Puss talk? No. Can Puss read? No. Then that is the reason why you are better than Puss – because you can talk and read…. If you do not learn, you are not good for half as much as Puss. You had better be drowned.” Nowadays, no children’s publisher would dare to suggest that either a child or a cat should be drowned – which just goes to show that what people consider shocking changes over time.
