Excerpt from Illustrations of Old English Literature, Vol. 1

IN spite of the progress of the Reformation, and the positive injunctions of the public authorities, it appears that the Citizens of London were long averse to the publication and reading of the Bible in English within the limits of their jurisdiction. The consequence was that they incurred the hostility of all the friends of the pending change in religion, and various works were pub lished against them. One of these, and certainly one of the most virulent, is reprinted in the following sheets: it is by a member of the Reformed Church, who was probably resident abroad for greater security; and it seems probable that it was printed either at Nuremberg, or at some other foreign town, where the typographer could not be reached: it bears the date of 1548, but is in all respects anonymous, and we are not aware that it has been suggested that any particular individual was the writer of it.

The obstinacy of the city upon the point, whether the Scrip tures should or should not be read in English, had not, of course, been overcome when' Queen Elizabeth came to the throne and on the lst January 1559, she was obliged to give commandment to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, that in every parish church within the boundary of London the parson or curate should read theepistle and the gospel of the day in the English tongue: Stow, whose authority we are quoting (annales, p. 1075, edit. Adds that the order was observed in most parish churches of the city; but he does not inform us that such was the case in all, as he probably would have done had there been no exceptions.

The writer in our hands is very bold and unmeasured in his denunciations, especially against the magnates of the city; and threatens, in another work, to expose their names, if they did not abandon the gross vices of which he accuses them. We do not know whether he was driven to this extremity.

In the course of his work he inserts many particulars, reli gions, historical and local, some new, and others well known. He mentions Standish, Frith, etc., by name; and the sale of pardons in Lombard Street, which is likened to the sale of pies in Soper Lane (now called Queen Street), is a curious topographical illustration. The author's style of writing is not unfrequently, as with his polemical contemporaries, a mixture of the familiar with the forcible; and the positions are elaborately supported by scrip tural quotations and allusions.

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