On the effect of Tyndale’s English translation, David Norton writes that “more of our English is ultimately learnt from Tyndale than from any other writer of English prose…” (10). In his book A History of the English Bible as Literature, Norton cites a layman named William Maldon who tells the story of how he began reading the Bible.

‘divers poor men in the town of Chelmsford in the county of Essex where my father dwelt and I born and with him brought up, the said poor men bought the New Testament of Jesus Christ and on Sundays did sit reading in lower end of church, and many would flock about them to hear their reading, then I came among the said readers to hear them reading of that glad and sweet tidings of the gospel, then my father seeing this that I listened unto them every Sunday, then came he and sought me among them, and brought me away from the hearing of them, and would have me to say the Latin matins with him, the which grieved me very much, and thus did fetch me away divers times, then I see I could not be in rest, then thought I, I will learn to read English, and then I will have the New Testament and read thereon myself, and then had I learned of an English primer as far as patris sapienta and then on Sundays I plied my English primer, the Maytide following I and my father’s apprentice, Thomas Jeffary laid our money together, and bought the New Testament in English, and hid it in our bedstraw and so exercised it at convenient times’ (cited in Norton, 10).

This vivid story highlights, at the level of a single family, the controversy surrounding the English Bible. In addition to the money and the bedstraw invested in Maldon hiding this book from his father, the English primer played a key role in Maldon’s ability to practice a religion that was based upon reading the New Testament in English.

Other historical and literary references to primers include Chaucer’s “Prioress’s Tale”. Butterworth cites this reference to primers in order to illustrate one of the uses of the primer, which was to educate children. 

From the table of contents (as pictured), the reader can gain a sense of the extensive contents of this primer, the order of which might prove to be a worthwhile future study. For the purposes of this project, an introductory note from Butterworth proves its use. He writes,

The Primers contained, along with other devotional matter, a significant amount of Scripture—from forty to sixty Psalms in their entirety as well as familiar passages from the New Testament and occasional excerpts from the Old. When it is realized that the several of the English Primers preceded the first printing of a complete English Bible—the Coverdale Bible (October 4, 1535)—and when it is borne in mind that the selections in the Primers were among the best-known and best-loved portions of the Bible, it will be seen how these Primers had their part in shaping the English text. 

The primer was a compilation and a guide. Intended for the laity, it could offer key passages from the Bible as well as prayers for worship. Like the English Bible itself, the primer has a precursor in the time of Wycliffe, and, closer to the time of Marshall’s primer, a 1523 primer published by Wynkyn de Worde. In The Stripping of the Altars, Eamon Duffy emphasizes the role of the primer for the Protestant project of Thomas Cranmer (archbishop of Canterbury) and others, who “had seen the potential of the primers as a means of carrying Protestant convictions to the widest possible audience of devout lay people, catching them off-guard as it were, on their knees” (444). Duffy cites Marshall’s Goodly Primer as “the most dramatic early example” (444).

This particular volume is a crucial document in the history of Christianity, theology, and English literature. It is also a book that invites us to consider what role(s) the translator, compiler, author, and reader can play. The details of the missing “letany” and the  “dialogue” or catechism in which the child is the one posing the questions rather than the father/teacher both attest to a turbulent and promising time for Protestant leaders and lay readers.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, martyrologists like John Foxe would make detailed accounts of the reading practices of laypeople, especially Christian martyrs. To love one’s New Testament was to love God. To return to Maldon once more: his story was included in Volume 8 of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, according to which Maldon was mocked by fellow servant John Apowel while reading his primer. Maldon’s rebuttal for this mocking seems the best evidence of the larger aims of this devotional book:

the said John Apowel mocked him after every word, with contrary gauds and flouting words irreverently, insomuch that he could no longer abide him for grief of heart, but turned unto him and said, ‘John, take heed what thou dost ; thou dost not mock me, but thou mockest God : for in mocking of his word, thou mockest him : and this is the word of God, though I be simple that read it ; and therefore beware what thou dost.’

In Marshall’s primer, the child asks questions of his father. The reading of his primer allows Maldon, the bound servant to the wheat-taker Hugh Aparry, to become the one who teaches the man who mocks him.

The English Bible and its supplements tell us much about the reversal of social roles that took place as a result of the Reformation. The study of this particular book, especially in its original form in the archive, allows us to honor the words of the lay reader. The primer is a useful place to begin this study, not only because it appears just before the New Testament newly acquired by the Beinecke, but also because this book may take its name from the Latin phrase liber primarius (See Butterworth, 3). The primer, like the Bible to come, was often the first book of the household, the book that anyone could read, no matter how “simple.”

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 Items listed on eBay are merely representative of our broader inventory. We specialize in early printed Bibles in English, with a particular focus on first editions and other significant printings. Our stock includes a wide range of Tyndale New Testaments, as well as first editions of the Coverdale Bible (1535), the Matthews Bible (1537), the Great Bible (1539), the Geneva Bible (1560), the Bishops Bible (1568) and the King James Bible (1611).  Please do not hesitate to enquire regarding other early printed books and manuscripts.