CHAPTER III.
AT LITTLE SODBURY
CHURCHMEN and gentry were frequent guests at the hospitable board. The topics agitating men's minds were often mentioned. Sometimes the conversation waxed warm. The chaplain rarely spoke, though nothing escaped his attention. It was impossible always to forbear. A question or a reflection was at times enough to draw opposition. Indeed the relevancy and significance of his words challenged his listener.
Tindale felt himself alone. He was not sure of the sympathies of his host: his hostess thought him presumptuous in holding his opinion against the company. The atmosphere was often unfriendly.
In Foxe's "Acts and Monuments" we have recorded the testimony of one who probably got the facts from Tindale himself. Describing such table talk, he adds: "Wherein as those men and Master Tindale did vary in opinions and judgments, then Master Tindale would shew them on the book the places by open and manifest Scripture; the which continued for a certain season divers and sundry times, until in the continuance thereof those great beneficed doctors waxed weary and bore a secret grudge in their hearts against Master Tindale".
(Demaus' "Life of Tindale" page 67.)
It was in the course of a conversation of the kind that Tindale drove one of those learned men to exclaim that the Pope's laws were above all other authority; to which came Tindale's reply, impetuous and defiant: "I defy the Pope and his laws. If God spare my life, ere many years I shall cause a boy that driveth the plow shall know more of the Scriptures than thou doest." (page 86 ib.)
Students of that age have been struck by the co-incidence of this anticipation of Tindale's and the prediction of Erasmus in the passage where the latter records his emphatic dissent from those who were unwilling to have the Scriptures translated into the vulgar tongue and read by private individuals.
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The coincidence is a striking one. It may well be that the daring of the Dutch man of letters smote a responsive chord in the breast of the brave Englishman. If the younger catches the torch from the hand of his precursor, must we disparage the courage with which the torch is carried forward and kept ablaze?
From Foxe again we take the picture of a little domestic scene, very realistic, wherein the lady of the house occupies the centre. "So upon a time some of those beneficed doctors had Master Walsh and the lady his wife, at a supper or banquet, there having among them talk at will without any gainsaying: and the supper or banquet being done, and Master Walsh and the lady his wife come home, they called for Master Tindale, and talked with him of such communication as had been, where they come fro (from), and of their opinions. Master Tindale there-unto made answer agreeable to the truth of God's word, and in reproving of their false opinions. The Lady Walsh, being a stout woman, and as Master Tindale did report her to be wise, being there no more but they three, Master Walsh, his wife and Master Tindale; 'Well,' said she, 'there was such a doctor, he may dispend (spend) two hundred pounds by the year, another one hundred pound, and another three hundred pound; and what think ye, were it reason that we should believe you before them so great, learned and beneficed men?' Master Tindale, hearing her, gave her no answer; nor after that had but small arguments against such, for he perceived it would not help in effect to the contrary."
Tindale had the good sense to know how vain would be argument with his disputant. He found another way. Ere long both Sir John and his lady took their stand firmly by his side.