At first it was not safe to make or distribute these early
translations in England. Numbers of copies were brought into the
country, however, and did much to promote the cause of the Reformation.
After Henry VIII. had broken with the pope the new English Bible
circulated freely among the people. Tyndal and Sir Thomas More carried
on a vigorous controversy in English upon some of the questions at issue
between the Church and the Protestants. Other important contributions to
the literature of the Reformation were the homely sermons preached at
Westminster and at Paul's Cross by Bishop Hugh Latimer, who was burned
at Oxford in the reign of Bloody Mary. The English Book of Common Prayer
was compiled in 1549-1552. More was, perhaps, the best representative of
a group of scholars who wished to enlighten and reform the Church from
the inside, but who refused to follow Henry VIII. in his breach with
Rome. Dean Colet and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, belonged to the
same company, and Fisher was beheaded in the same year (1535) with More,
and for the same offense, namely, refusing to take the oath to maintain
the act confirming the king's divorce from Catharine of Arragon and his
marriage with Anne Boleyn. More's philosophy is best reflected in his
_Utopia_, the description of an ideal commonwealth, modeled on Plato's
_Republic_, and printed in 1516.
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