THE

HE brightest blazon on the arms of the Smiths of Bramham would be that which should record (were such a record possible), their association with the devoted band of primitive Quakers, founders of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The "atchievements" recorded in the "fields" of Heraldry have been mostly those "battles of the warrior" which are "with confused noise and garments rolled in blood." These Smiths were soldiers in the forefront of a bloodless battle; the battle of the martyrs and confessors, which has, for ages, been waged in behalf of liberty of thought, speech and conscience, against tyranny, spiritual and political; a battle in which the master virtues are not those of strength and fierceness, but the bravery of heroic endurance, of unwavering faith and unwearying patience, of love and forgiveness of enemies for Christ's sake. And it is not easy, in these days of affluence, and of a political and religious freedom, bought for us by such ancestors as these, even to imagine the amount of moral courage and resolution which enabled them to choose, instead of the ease, respect and position which a submission against their conscience would have permitted them to enjoy in their

ancestral home-the wrench of the uprooting from its native soil of a longestablished family, the tedious and dangerous voyage in little-known seas on the tiny ships of the period, and the final settlement upon unknown, untilled and forest-covered shores, inhabited, with the exception of a few Swedes and Dutch, only by the roving savage. A very few articles of household use remain from among those which they brought over. Among these is an ancient oaken chair, still in possession of the Allinson family. A more interesting relic is the Bible and family record in possession of Richard Mott, of Burlington. This Bible, which is of one of the earliest translations—that published, in 1537, by the martyr Tyndale-gives a strong presumptive evidence that the spirit of protest which made Quakers and emigrants of the Smiths under the two Charleses, was inherited by them from ancestors who were Protestants in the age of Tyndale and of the bloody Queen Mary.

Joseph Sansom, in the before-mentioned account of the Smith family, seems to hint that Robert and Richard Smith, martyrs under Mary, were of this lineage. I have, however, found no proof of any such connection. These

martyrs were sons of a Simon Smith, one of the most active co-operators with Tyndale in the dissemination of his version of the Scriptures.

The "Smith Bible" contains a family record partly transcribed by Richard Smith, No. 5, from an earlier one by Richard, No. 2, which goes back to the birth of his father, Richard Smith, the first, but makes no mention of his grandfather, William Smith. From Richard, No. 1, the record is continued regularly through five generations.

The Bible is of the translation known among bibliographers as the "RogersTyndale," or "Tyndale-Rogers" Bible, from its being the fruit of the combined labors, in translating, of the martyrs Tyndale or Tindal, and Rogers. "All the editions," says an excellent authority, "of the Rogers-Tyndale are very rare.' Ours is that published by Raynalde and Hyll, a reprint, in 1549, of the original of 1537. The following general description is taken partly from Lowndes' "Bibliographical Manual," and partly from the book itself.

It is printed in the Gothic or "blackletter" type, and though Lowndes finds fault with the type and printing, to me it seems, in the language of a friend," clear and bright throughout; well printed." The title (prefixed to Old Testament), printed in red and black ink, reads :*

"The Byble, whych is all the holy Scripture; in whych are contayned the

*The photograph is taken from the second title prefixed to the New Testament.

Olde and Newe Testament, truelye and purely translated into Englishe by Thomas Matthewe, 1537." (This name of Thomas Matthewe, as we shall presently see, was a nom de plume of Tyndale and Rogers). "And now Imprinted in the yeare of oure Lorde 1549."

"Esaye, I. Hearcken to, ye heavens, and thou earth, give eare; For the Lord Speaketh."

"Imprinted at London by Thomas Raynalde and William Hyll, dwelling in Paule's churche yeard."

This is surrounded by a wood-cut in nine parts; eight of them Scripture scenes, and the ninth representing the King (Henry VIII.,) committing the Bible to the care of priests and nobles. Copious "prologes" to the reader, tables and notes are interspersed, and at the end of the Bible the dates of original print and of reprint are repeated at length. Psalms xci., 5, reads: "So that thou shalt not nede to be afraied for eny bugges by nyghte, nor for the arowe that flyeth by daye." ("Bugges,” bugbears or apparitions). From this curious text it is sometimes called the "Bugges" Bible, and sometimes, from the following from Jer. viii., the "Treakle" Bible.

"The harvest is gone, the summer hath an ende, and we are not helped. I am sore vexed, because of the hyrte of my people; I am hevy and abashed, for there is noo more Treakle at Galaad, and there is no physycian y! can heale the hurte of my people."

William Tindal (commonly spelt Tyndale, but the name, as signed by himself, is Tindal), furnished the translation of the New Testament in this Bible, and he and Miles Coverdale supplied the five books of Moses. The rest of the work of translation was chiefly that of John Rogers, the "proto-martyr" of Queen Mary's reign. These translators concealed their identity under the pseudonym of Thomas Matthewe, as will be seen by the following extracts from Fox's "Acts and Monuments of the Church."

Of Tindal, he says that he was bred up from a child at Magdalen College, Oxford University, and acquired great learning in the dead languages and skill in Scripture. Embracing reformed tenets from the writings of Erasmus, he confuted in disputations the most eminent Romish priests of the day, and awoke such bitter enmity among them that his life was in danger from their machinations. After seeking in vain from a powerful patron that protection which was necessary to him in his proposed work of translating the Bible, he fled to Holland, and thence passed into Saxony, where "he had conference with Luther and other learned men in those quarters," on his great design. then returned to the Netherlands and established himself at Antwerp, where he finished and printed, in 1527, his New Testament in English, which was soon disseminated in his native country. He next translated the five books of Moses, but in attempting to carry his

He

work by sea to Hamburg, to confer with Miles or "Sir Myles" Coverdale, then dwelling in Germany, a learned man and zealous reformer, who had formerly been an Augustine friar of the monastery of Stoke-Clare, near Bumstead, Essex, he suffered shipwreck and the loss of his manuscript. Coverdale and he, thereupon, at once set about making a new translation of the Pentateuch, which they finished in 1529, at the house of Dame Margaret Van Emmerson in Hamburg. Tindal then returned to Antwerp for the better convenience of disseminating his translations, and his books having been condemned by the Roman authorities, he was, in 1536, seized by emissaries of the German Emperor's Government, and suffered death by fire at Filford, near Antwerp. His last words were: "Lord, open the King of England's eyes."

66

John Rogers, like Tindal, was brought up in an university, that of Cambridge. He was chosen," (says Fox,) "by the Merchants Adventurers, to be their chaplain at Antwerp, in Brabant, whom he served to their good contentation many years. It chanced him there to fall in company with that worthy servant and minister of God, William Tindal, and with Miles Coverdale, which both, for the hatred they bare to Popish superstition and idolatry and love to true religion, had forsaken their native country. In conferring with them the Scriptures, he came to great knowledge in the Gospel of God, insomuch that he cast off the heavy yoke