William Tyndale, born in 1494 in Gloucestershire, could see the potential of printing in bringing accessible translations of the Bible to the common man. He was born 18 years after William Caxton revolutionised the availability of books by bringing the first printing press to England.

William Tyndale

Francine it would be interesting to know if Wycliffe's work would have had as wide an audience as Tyndale's had printing been available in his time - he lived from 1328 to 1384 and thus missed the revolutionary beneftis of printing in England. I had been thinking of doing an article about Wycliffe during the next few weeks, as his story complements Tyndale's. It will also prompt me to research Wycliffe's death which I had not been aware was grisly - will look in to this. My memories from long ago history lessons are that whils he was seen as a heritic by the church this label was only placed on him after his death.

Wycliff indeed suffered a terrible time in trying to get his word out to people, and seems to have lived a shadowed existence for the sake of his beliefs and his need to get his knowledge and learning out to a wider public

I love the idea of working a visit to Wroms into a trip to Oberammaergau Francine.

Francine thanks for this. As you say all is intertwined - if he had not died through natural causes who knows what death might have been in store for Wycliff... It seems that men in particular suffered horrendous deaths for their beliefs in that period. My next article is going to be on Henry VIII's six wives, two of whom were beheaded. Had they been men, would their fate have been less clean? (a strange word for such a horrendous way of dying).