e tax upon wool,
wool-fells, and leather was continued for five years, and in return a
general pardon was granted for all loyal subjects, who had acted
illegally in opposing the rebels, and for the great body of the
insurgents, who had been misled by the declamations of the demagogues.

WYCLIFFE TRANSLATES THE BIBLE INTO
ENGLISH

A.D. 1382

J. PATERSON SMYTH

It may safely be said that no greater service has been
rendered at once to religion and to literature than the
translation of the Bible into the English tongue. This
achievement did not indeed, like that of Luther's German
translation, come as it were by a single stroke. Luther's
Bible caused him to be regarded as the founder of the
present literary language of Germany--New High German--which
his translation permanently established. The English Bible,
on the other hand, was the growth of centuries. But to the
contributions of able hands through many generations, during
which the English language itself passed through a wonderful
formative development, the incomparable beauty of King
James' version owes its existence, and our literature its
greatest ornaments.

It is impossible to say when the first translation of any
part of the Bible into English was made. No English Bible of
earlier date than the fourteenth century has ever been
found. But translations, even of the whole Bible, older than
Wcyliffe's are, by at least two eminent witnesses, said to
have existed. "As for olde translacions, before Wycliffe's
time," says Sir Thomas More, "they remain lawful and be in
some folkes handes." "The hole byble," he declares
(_Dyalogues_, p. 138, ed. 1530), "was long before Wycliffe's
days, by vertuous and well learned men, translated into the
English tong." And Cranmer, in his prologue to the second
edition of the "Great Bible," bears testimony equally
explicit to the translation of Scripture "in the Saxons
tongue." And when that language "waxed olde and out of
common usage," he says, the Bible "was again translated into
the newer language." There has never been any means of
testing these statements, which were probably due to some
inexplicable error. Abundant evidence exists relating to
many Saxon and later translations of various parts of the
Bible before the time of Wycliffe. Among the most notable of
the early translators were the Venerable Bede and Alfred the
Great. Some portions