The Bonfire That Helped Spread the English Bible

Imagine trying to stop a book so hard… you end up funding its next edition.

On this day, 27 October 1526, Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall ordered copies of William Tyndale’s English New Testament to be burned at St Paul’s Cathedral. The goal: to stop heresy and control what the people could read.

But Tunstall’s crackdown had an unexpected twist. To destroy the books, he had to buy them first, money that reportedly paid for Tyndale’s next, improved edition.

I’m historian and author Claire Ridgway, and in today’s On This Day in Tudor History, we’ll explore how one bishop’s bonfire turned into the best publicity Tyndale could have asked for, and how, just a decade later, English Bibles would appear in every church by royal order.

Was Tunstall defending the faith, or did he help spread the very thing he feared?

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