Talk: From Wyclif through Tyndale and beyond: The Reformation in Amersham

St Mary’s Church, Old Amersham

£5 suggested donation

In partnership with the Tyndale Society and St Mary’s Church, we are marking Tyndale500, the 500^th anniversary of the first New Testament in English.

Amersham was very hospitable to Lollardy, the heretical movement which flowed from the ideas of John Wyclif (d.1384). Lollards stressed the importance of the Bible in English, but copies were only available in manuscript and their ownership was forbidden.  Despite persecution, Lollardy persisted in Amersham, through to the early sixteenth century. In 1526 William Tyndale produced the first printed translation of the New Testament, which was also the first translation from the original Greek. It proved impossible to control its distribution and it was to change English-speaking religion for ever.

Andrew Hope grew up in the Weald of Kent, another area with traditions of Lollardy. He read history at Cambridge, and has undertaken post-graduate work at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford. He was a founder member of the Tyndale Society and has been editor of ‘Reformation’, its academic journal. He has published a number of articles on Lollardy and the early Reformation.”

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