IT seems strange to read that there was a time during the reign of Henry VIII. when permission was given for all to read the Bible: indeed a notice was sent to every clergyman bidding him to provide “one book of the whole Bible in the largest volume in English,” and directing it should be “set up in some convenient place within the said church, which ye have the care of, whereat your parishioners may most commodiously resort to the same and read it . . . and ye shall discourage no man, privily or apertly, from reading or hearing of the same Bible, but shall expressly provoke, stir, and exhort every person to read the same, as that which is the very lively word of God, that every Christian is bound to embrace, believe, and follow, if he looks to be saved.”
Although this was the King’s command, there were those who had to suffer for the privilege of reading the Word of God, and one of such of whom we read was a lad of fifteen, named William Maldon. When news came that the king had permitted that the Bible should be set in the churches, certain poor men of his native town of Chelmsford bought a copy of the New Testament, and were wont to sit together on Sundays in the lower end of the church reading it aloud. Many came to hear the reading—William among them.
His father, who regarded the Scriptures as belonging to the clergy alone, was grieved that his son should thus fall into the snare of listening to what it was not for a poor ignorant lad to hear, and many times fetched him away that he might hear no more of the reading. The boy went again and again, and at last, determined not to be robbed of what was so precious to him, resolved to learn to read for himself. This he succeeded in doing, and then he and his father’s apprentice bought a New Testament, which they read by stealth, keeping it hidden beneath the straw upon which they lay.
But William could not bide the truth which he had learnt from the study of his cherished book, and one night, hearing his mother speak of the crucifix, and of kneeling to it, and lifting up the hands in adoration when it was carried past in procession, he told her that such acts of reverence were contrary to the command of God— “Thou shalt not make any graven image, nor bow down to it, nor worship it.”
“What,” she replied, “wilt thou not worship the cross, which was about thee when thou went christened, and must be laid upon thee when thou art dead?” and, amazed at the boy’s presumption and obstinacy, she told his father what he had dared to say. That night, when William was asleep, he was roughly awakened by his father, who pulled him out of bed, and, in spite of his mother’s entreaties that he would forbear, beat him until he was half dead.
The like treatment may have been suffered by others of the “young boys” of whom we read that they flocked to the churches to hear the reading: for is it not written in the Book which this boy had learned to love so well, “A man’s foes shall be they of his own household”? (Matt. 10:3636And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. (Matthew 10:36)).