William Tyndale (circa 1494-1536), Translator of the Bible

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Tyndale was a Protestant reformer and scholar who translated the Bible into the Early Modern English of his day. His was the first English translation to work directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, and the first to take advantage of the new medium of print, which allowed for its wide distribution. In 1528, he was attacked as a heretic by Sir Thomas More who claimed that Tyndale had translated certain key words differently to the church-authorised definitions. In 1535, he was arrested, jailed near Brussels for more than a year, tried for heresy and treason and then strangled and burnt at the stake. Much of Tyndale's work found its way into the King James Version of the Bible, published in 1611.