An Oxford don, John Wycliffe, produced the first complete Bible in English in 1382, many years before the invention of the printing press. For this he was excommunicated from the Church, and some years after his death and burial, his remains were dug up and “cast out” by order of the church authorities.

The first printed English translation of the New Testament was made by William Tyndale, and published in 1525. It was also seen as a heresy by the Church, particularly because Tyndale had acted on his own initiative with regard to the Scriptures, instead of deferring to Church authority. Mere possession of his Bible was enough to get you burned at the stake – the fate that Tyndale himself eventually suffered.

Translation of the Old Testament was completed by Myles Coverdale in 1535.

In 1537, the first complete English version translated directly from the original Hebrew and Greek texts was published. It is generally known as the Matthew-Tyndale Bible, because it was the combined work of Tyndale and John Rogers, working under the pseudonym of Thomas Matthew.

By the end of the 16th century, there were a number of bibles in use by the Protestant church. These were:

• The Great Bible of 1539, commissioned by Henry VIII
• The Geneva Bible of 1560, the main Protestant Bible, based largely on Tyndale, which was full of controversial marginal notes that sought to interpret the text from a strict post-Reformation standpoint
• The Bishops’ Bible of 1568, a revision of the Great Bible compiled as an intended rival to the inflammatory Geneva
• The Douai-Rheims Bible of 1582, produced by English theological colleges in France, and based solely on the original Latin translation made by St Jerome in the early fifth century