2014 31
“PROBABLY THE ONLY COPY PRIVATELY OWNED OF THIS EDITION OF TYNDALE’S NEW TESTAMENT”
The binding to this volume highlights the “prymer” that precedes the New Testament.
MARSHALL’S GOODLY PRYMER, LONDON 1535
This copy of the 1536 Tyndale New Testament begins with another full text entitled A goodly prymer in englyshe, newly corrected and printed, with certayne godly meditations and prayers added to the same, very necessarie and profitable for all them that ryghte assuredly understande not the latine and greke tongues. Also understood as a book of hours (and catalogued as such in the listing at the end of this post), this text is authored by “Wylliam Marshall” and printed by John Byddell.
In the Beinecke copy, this cover page, which also features the royal coat of arms, is signed, as is the leaf opposite this illustration.
Cover page and inscriptions in 2014 31, the 1536 Tyndale New Testament held at the Beinecke; the letters “H” and “A” refer to the reigning King and Queen.
In his 1953 study The English Primers (1529-1545: Their Publication and Connection with the English Bible and the Reformation in England, Charles C. Butterworth offers both an overview of the English primer in general and a particular account of the major features of Marshall’s Goodly Primer from 1535. On the cover page, Butterworth highlights the mention of the “Greek tongue,” which “shows how the leaven of the Revival of Learning was at work, thanks to Tyndale and Erasmus” (105).
The presence of this primer in the same volume as the English New Testament attests to Tyndale’s desire to reach a mass audience through the vernacular Bible. Tyndale’s goal changed English society in at least two remarkable ways, one religious, the other educational. Tyndale gave us Bibles, and countless English words. On the effect of Tyndale’s English translation, David Norton writes that “more of our English is ultimately learnt from Tyndale than from any other writer of English prose…” (10). In his book A History of the English Bible as Literature, Norton cites a layman named William Maldon who tells the story of how he began reading the Bible.
‘divers poor men in the town of Chelmsford in the county of Essex where my father dwelt and I born and with him brought up, the said poor men bought the New Testament of Jesus Christ and on Sundays did sit reading in lower end of church, and many would flock about them to hear their reading, then I came among the said readers to hear them reading of that glad and sweet tidings of the gospel, then my father seeing this that I listened unto them every Sunday, then came he and sought me among them, and brought me away from the hearing of them, and would have me to say the Latin matins with him, the which grieved me very much, and thus did fetch me away divers times, then I see I could not be in rest, then thought I, I will learn to read English, and then I will have the New Testament and read thereon myself, and then had I learned of an English primer as far as patris sapienta and then on Sundays I plied my English primer, the Maytide following I and my father’s apprentice, Thomas Jeffary laid our money together, and bought the New Testament in English, and hid it in our bedstraw and so exercised it at convenient times’ (cited in Norton, 10).
This vivid story highlights, at the level of a single family, the controversy surrounding the English Bible. In addition to the money and the bedstraw invested in Maldon hiding this book from his father, the English primer played a key role in Maldon’s ability to practice a religion that was based upon reading the New Testament in English.
Other historical and literary references to primers include Chaucer’s “Prioress’s Tale”. Butterworth cites this reference to primers in order to illustrate one of the uses of the primer, which was to educate children. For this reason, some primers include the alphabet (3).
The volume of Marshall’s primer included in Beinecke 2014 31 consists of many parts, beginning with an admonition to the reader, followed by an almanac. On the page marking December, a reader has written a note that includes the date 1536.
Marginal note in the calendar of the “goodly prymer”
Following the almanac is a preface in which the author compares the grace of God to medicine through a brief “ensample,” marked with a marginal notation. At the end of the preface, another marginal note appears, directing the reader to yet another book: “Yf ye will se the comaundement substantially declared at length, rede the boke entitled the booke of good workes.”
marginal note at the beginning of 1535 “goodly prymer,” marking “an ensample” of a sick man seeking medicine, in the same manner that the Christian must seek the grace of God
note directing reader to “the booke of good workes”
The ten commandments follow this preface. The commandments are broken into two “tables,” begin with an introduction to the “table of Moyses,” and include explanations of each commandment. In the opening to this section, Marshall writes,
Therfore in the fyrste of all the comaundemetes we be taught what god requireth in every manes herts, and what man ought to judge and thynke of hym, that is, that he like ever for [the] best of him, euyn as of a father, or of a speciall frende, and that without doubtynge or any mistrust, with constant faythe, trust, and loud, euer fearing to displease him, euyn as kynde [and] louyng children fear to displease their naturall fathers. For very nature do the teach [that] there is one god, of whom all our goodnes springeth, whiche is our succor in all aduersitie. For this thynge euyn the heathen dyd attribute and graunte unto theyr Idollles.
Opening of “The tenne comaundementes.”
The contents of the primer following the commandments include “The creed or belefe,” “A generall confession for euery sinner,” “An instruction howe and in what maner we oughte to pray, to almyghty god,” and “The prayer of the lorde called the Pater noster.” The pater noster includes explanations or “understandynge of the wordes” after each phrase.
Following the pater noster is “The salutation of our moste blessed lady saynt Mary the virgin,” which is followed by another prayer, “Conditor cell et terre” (O Maker of heaven and earth).
Next comes the “office of all estates,” which names, first of all social groups, the “Byshop.” The groups then listed are “Rulers,” “The comens,” “husbandes,” “Wyues,” “fathers and mothers,” “Chyldren,” “Maysters,” “Seruauntes,” and “Wydowes.”
Further contents include “The summe of all Good Workes,” a series of hymns and psalms, lessons, “the versicle,” “the song of Austen and Ambrose,” “The songe of zachary the preeste, saynt John Baptistes father,” “The prime and hours,” “Euensonge” and “The complene.”
A page is missing between the seven psalms, at the end of which there is a preface that reads:
Forasmoche good christen reder, as I am certeynly perswaded, that diuerse [persons] of small iudgemet and knowlege in holy scripture haue ben offended, for that yt in the englyshe prymer, whiche I lately set forthe, I dyd omitte and leaue out the letany, whiche I take god to witnes, I did not of any perverse mynde or opinion, thynkyng that our blessed lady, and holy sayntes, myghte in no wyse be prayed unto, but rather bicause I was not ignoraunt of the wycked opinion, and vayne superstitious maner, that dyuerse and many persons haue not only used in worshyppyng of them: but also thynkyng that god by Christ wolde non otherwyse gladly here and accepte their petitiones and prayers, but by his blessed mother, and saints, amoges other carnall and worldly perswasions alledgyng this.
Butterworth begins his discussion of Marshall’s primer by noting that “he seems to have been irked by complaints that his Primer had neither Litany nor Dirge” (105). These complaints, Butterworth suggests, likely contributed to the 1535 reprinting of Marshall’s 1534 primer. The litany and dirge are two of the most significant changes that Butterworth traces from the 1534 to the 1535 editions. Perhaps attesting to the controversy around these features, however, the Beinecke copy is missing the litany. Instead, the remainder of a cut page juts out between this preface and the next section of the primer.
Page missing after preface to the litany
After what would be the litany if not missing from this copy, Marshall includes “An exposition after the maner of a contemplation upon the .li. psalme, called “Miserere meideus.”
In this section of the primer, Marshall presents each line of Psalm 51 in a large print, followed by a long and elaborate prayer. According to Chris Stamatakis, this is an English prose translation of Savonarola’s exposition of the psalm. Stamatakis notes, also, that in the 1538 edition of Marshall’s primer, the Latin text of the psalm is printed parallel to Marshall’s English exposition.
Although the litany does not appear in the Beinecke copy, the “dirige,” the other major feature of the 1535 edition according to Butterworth, does appear, and is preceded by a second “admonition or warnyng to the reder.”
“The Dirige”
The remaining sections of the primer include a newly added prayer (noted by Butterworth, page 108) entitled “O bone Jesu,” “The passion of our sauiour Christe,” “frutefull remembraunce of Christes passion,” “A christen instruction,” and “A Dialogue betwene the father and the sonne askyng certayne questions/ and the father answerynge.” Butterworth notes that this, too, is a new addition to the 1535 primer: “By some strange twist the roles are now reversed, and it is the child who asks the questions…” (111). In this section, the ten commandments are rendered in red ink:
ten commandments, within the dialogue between “father and sonne”
As the top section of this page shows, the child’s question precedes the father’s answers in this section, blurring distinctions between the teacher and the taught.
At the end of the primer we find the psalmes of passion, a prayer for the prophet Jonas, and a “table of the boke.”
From this table the reader can gain a sense of the extensive contents of this primer, the order of which might prove to be a worthwhile future study. For the purposes of this project, an introductory note from Butterworth proves its use. He writes,
The Primers contained, along with other devotional matter, a significant amount of Scripture—from forty to sixty Psalms in their entirety as well as familiar passages from the New Testament and occasional excerpts from the Old. When it is realized that the several of the English Primers preceded the first printing of a complete English Bible—the Coverdale Bible (October 4, 1535)—and when it is borne in mind that the selections in the Primers were among the best-known and best-loved portions of the Bible, it will be seen how these Primers had their part in shaping the English text. (2)
The primer was a compilation and a guide. Intended for the laity, it could offer key passages from the Bible as well as prayers for worship. Like the English Bible itself, the primer has a precursor in the time of Wycliffe, and, closer to the time of Marshall’s primer, a 1523 primer published by Wynkyn de Worde. In The Stripping of the Altars, Eamon Duffy emphasizes the role of the primer for the Protestant project of Thomas Cranmer (archbishop of Canterbury) and others, who “had seen the potential of the primers as a means of carrying Protestant convictions to the widest possible audience of devout lay people, catching them off-guard as it were, on their knees” (444). Duffy cites Marshall’s Goodly Primer as “the most dramatic early example” (444).
This particular volume of the primer is bound with the New Testament, translated by Tyndale, a Bible that contains a number of prologues, to be discussed in a future post of this blog. This book is a crucial document in the history of Christianity, theology, and English literature. It is also a book that invites us to consider what role(s) the translator, compiler, author, and reader can play. The details of the missing “letany” and the “dialogue” or catechism in which the child is the one posing the questions rather than the father/teacher both attest to a turbulent and promising time for Protestant leaders and lay readers.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, martyrologists like John Foxe would make detailed accounts of the reading practices of laypeople, especially Christian martyrs. To love one’s New Testament was to love God. To return to Maldon once more: his story was included in Volume 8 of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, according to which Maldon was mocked by fellow servant John Apowel while reading his primer. Maldon’s rebuttal for this mocking seems the best evidence of the larger aims of this devotional book:
the said John Apowel mocked him after every word, with contrary gauds and flouting words irreverently, insomuch that he could no longer abide him for grief of heart, but turned unto him and said, ‘John, take heed what thou dost ; thou dost not mock me, but thou mockest God : for in mocking of his word, thou mockest him : and this is the word of God, though I be simple that read it ; and therefore beware what thou dost.’
In Marshall’s primer, the child asks questions of his father. The reading of his primer allows Maldon, the bound servant to the wheat-taker Hugh Aparry, to become the one who teaches the man who mocks him.
The English Bible and its supplements tell us much about the reversal of social roles that took place as a result of the Reformation. The study of this particular book, especially in its original form in the archive, allows us to honor the words of the lay reader. The primer is a useful place to begin this study, not only because it appears just before the New Testament newly acquired by the Beinecke, but also because this book may take its name from the Latin phrase liber primarius (See Butterworth, 3). The primer, like the Bible to come, was often the first book of the household, the book that anyone could read, no matter how “simple.”
Primary Sources
The acts and monuments of John Foxe, ed. S. R. Cattley, 8 vols. (1837–41), vol. 8
Beinecke 2014 31, A goodly prymer in englyshe by William Marshall, 1535
Yale Orbis catalog listing and description: http://orbis.library.yale.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=2769&recCount=50&recPointer=1&bibId=11803040 (NT) http://hdl.handle.net/10079/bibid/11802780 (Primer/Prayer book/Book of hours)
More information can be found on the Beinecke website, here: http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/about/news/beinecke-acquires-rare-english-translations-bible
Secondary Works Cited
Butterworth, Charles C.. The English primers, 1529-1545; their publication and connection with the English Bible and the Reformation in England.. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953. Print.
Duffy, Eamon. The stripping of the altars: traditional religion in England, c.1400-c.1580. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992. Print.
Norton, David. A history of the English Bible as literature. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Print.
Suggested Reading
Stamatakis, Chris. Sir Thomas Wyatt and the rhetoric of rewriting: turning the word. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Print.
Greenslade, S. L.. The Cambridge history of the Bible. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Print.
