The first notable translator of the Bible into English was Wycliffe. Around 1380 he and some aides produced an English translation. This was before the printing press, so each Bible had to be copied by hand—a long and painstaking process.
But many people were eager to read the Bible in English, and Wycliffe’s version circulated in manuscript form for 150 years.
Church authorities decreed that reading an English Bible was a criminal offense. People read it anyway. With copies rare and expensive, people would pay a “rental fee” to study a copy of the Bible for an hour or so.
Common folk like farmers would pay for this privilege with produce. Illiterate folks would gather around while some brave soul read to them the Bible in their own language.
Wycliffe was never in his lifetime punished for doing his English translation. He was put on trial postmortem, forty years after his death.
Found guilty, his body was unearthed and burned, with his ashes scattered in a river.
