Cranmer Bible Paper - Philanthropic Lodge No 304, Freemasons Leeds

For many reasons, Bibles feature heavily in this list. From the lavish manuscript Bibles produced in scriptoria across Europe in the medieval period, to the 1454 Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed in the West using the new technology of moveable type, and beyond, the dissemination of the text of the scriptures has always fascinated scholars and collectors alike. The history of the Bible in England is particularly rich in these iconic books: the Wyclifite Bible, the Tyndale Bible, the Coverdale Bible, the Breeches Bible, the She Bible, the King James Bible.

Amongst the most important and most collectable though is the 1539 Great Bible, the focus of this paper. Its importance is easily summed up - it is the first authorised edition of the Bible in English, sanctioned by Henry VIII to be read aloud in churches across the land and providing the authoritative text for the services of the newly formed Church of England.

This paper focuses on the provenance and history of one copy of the Great Bible, exploring how it made its way to Philanthropic Lodge number 304, but it will range somewhat wider. It is hard to understand the importance of the Great Bible without first understanding something of its history, and the painful struggle undertaken by generations of men who sought to bring the word of God to the common man, so it begins with a brief overview of the key moments in the history of the Bible in England.¹

The traditional story begins with John Wyclif (d.1384), long famed as the first man to undertake a translation of the Bible into English, but it is worth noting that portions of the Bible had circulated in English and Anglo-Saxon long before Wyclif. In the seventh century Caedmon, an illiterate cow-herder and lay monk of Whitby, miraculously recited the Christian song of creation in Old English verse. Bede’s history contains a metrical version of large portions of Old Testament history, the life of Christ and the teachings of the Apostles, attributed to Caedmon, as well as his own versions of the Apostles’

Towards the end of the seventh century the Psalter was translated into Anglo Saxon by Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury and Anglo-Saxon glosses can be regularly found in Gospel books, perhaps most famously the Lindisfarne Gospels; in the middle of the tenth century a translation into Northumbrian dialect was added to the Latin text.

The Lindisfarne Text

Nor was Wyclif the first to work comprehensively on a block of text; a translation of the Psalter and Canticles survives from 1320, another dated 1349, but these manuscripts were for private use and did not circulate widely. It is Wyclif's ambition which sets him apart. ² Reacting to the corruption of the Church, doctrinal, ritual and economic, he sought to pass the text of the Bible direct to its audience.

He, working with a group of like-minded divines, translated the text into English, completing the task in or about 1382. Wyclif and his fellow translators worked from the Latin vulgate, for over a thousand years the definitive edition of the Bible and the text used by the majority of Christians. Hence, the resulting testament was effectively a translation of a translation, and the resulting text was highly defective.

Despite this, it circulated very widely and was enormously influential; the fact that today more than 170 Wyclifite manuscripts survive, despite the best efforts of the clergy to supress them and the destruction of libraries which took place in the sixteenth century, gives some indication of their spread and impact.

Amongst these pioneering scholars was Erasmus, the Dutch theologian, who in 1516 published the first edition of the Greek New Testament. Erasmus’s edition had its flaws, but it showed clearly that the Latin Vulgate, then the definitive Biblical text was awash with errors and mistranslations.

Erasmus

Tyndale was a Hebrew scholar, appalled by the fact that his Oxford theology degree syllabus did not include the study of scripture. He almost certainly acquired a copy of the Erasmus New Testament which proved the inspiration for his own translation. In an argument with a cleric he is memorably said to have uttered the famous words: “If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than thou doest” ⁴

Tyndale - New Testament

So, finally, we come to the genesis of the Great Bible. After the split with Rome in 1534 Henry VIII, now Supreme Head of the Church of England, needed a new English Bible for his new English church. In 1537 the Tyndale and Coverdale bibles were combined and issued in a version known as Matthew’s Bible, after the pseudonym Thomas Matthew used by its true editor, John Rogers, Tyndale’s literary executor.⁹ Thomas Cromwell, the King’s Chief Minister, and Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, were granted permission to publish a revised version of the text of Matthew’s Bible, the revisions to be undertaken by Miles Coverdale.

The Mathew Bible

The title-page to the Great Bible is a masterpiece of allegorical imagery. ¹² At one time incorrectly thought to be designed by Hans Holbein, it is nevertheless a remarkable piece of work. As the opening leaf of the first authorised edition of the new Church of England it was an unmissable opportunity to communicate a visual message about the new Royal Supremacy to every English parishioner. The highest figure in the engraving represents the Christ in the clouds of heaven. Two labels contain His words. On the left we find the text of Isa. 55. 11 “so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” To the right the words are addressed at King Henry VIII, who, having laid aside his crown, and kneeling with outstretched hands, receives the declaration, “I have found a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will” (Acts xiii. 22). Henry replies: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet” (Ps. cxix. 105).

Below, on the right, Cromwell appears a second time, identified by the arms engraved in the roundel. He in turn is delivering the Word of God to the laity, whilst on the other side we see Cranmer, indicated by both his costume and his arms, placing the sacred volume in the hands of one of his clergy.

In the final set of images, we see a preacher at work, spreading God’s word and the glory of the King. This is met with a universal chorus of joy and thankfulness, the crowd so moved that they cannot help but shout “Vivat Rex,” and “God save the king”. Even the prisoners look wistfully on from their cells, sharing in the greatness of God, and by implication the greatness of Henry.

The message here is clear: by tracking the repeating motif of the Verbum Dei (the Word of God), every English parishioner witnessed the direct flow of authority from God to Henry, from King to the clergy via Thomas Cranmer, and from King to the nobility through Thomas Cromwell. It is a masterpiece of political and theological polemic.

The first indications that things are not quite what they seem come from the title page of the Lodge copy. The first thing one notices is that the woodcut border and the text block at the centre of the page do not come from the same book. The border has had its central panel excised, and replaced, the two entities coming from different sources. The border contains a useful clue to its age. A comparison with the 1539 woodcut border shows one marked difference; the arms which identify Thomas Cromwell have been excised in the Lodge copy. Cromwell navigated the complex political arena around Henry VIII very adeptly in the 1530s but fell foul of the King over his arranged marriage to Anne of Cleves in January 1540.

The Lodge Bible

Cromwell was arrested, stripped of all honours and was beheaded on Tower Hill on 28 July 1540, the day of the King's marriage to Catherine Howard, the executioner famously struggling to sever the poor man’s head.¹⁴

His loss of royal favour (and of head) resulted in his hasty removal from the allegorical story of the title page and the removal of his arms from the roundel; hence this border must be of an edition dated after July 1540. The close study of the border allows us to identify exactly which edition it was taken from; one printed in November 1541,¹⁵ indeed this is the edition from which the bulk of the remaining text of the Bible in the Lodge copy is drawn, that known as the sixth Great Bible, issued in November 1541.

The central panel, however, is more difficult to pin down. Only two editions are known (above) which are dated 1540 and which bear Richard Grafton’s name, ¹⁶ and neither matches the setting of the Lodge copy. There are many textual variations between the letterpress title pages, the key features summarised below.

STC 2076	Lodge copy	STC 2071
Pilcrow	[Wanting pilcrow]	Pilcrow
Alternating red and black lines beginning with red.	Alternating red and black lines beginning with black.	Alternating red and black lines beginning with red.
con=tét of al the holy scrypture	con=tent of all the holy scripture	con=tent of all the holy scrypture
of yᵉ olde,and newe testame[n]t,	of yᵉ olde,and new testame[n]t,	of the olde & new testament,
prologe	prologue	prologe
archbysshop	archbyshop	archbysshop
[three dots to either side of line]	[no dots]	[no dots]
Cantor	Cantor	Cantor=
bury,	bury	bury,
apoynted	apoynted	appoynted
churches.	churches.	churches
Prynted by Rychard Grafton.	Printed by Rychard Grafton.	Printed by Rycharde  [additional spaces] Grafton
	[Variant page spacing of ‘Cum priuilegio’]
M.D.xl.	M.D.xl.	An. Do. M.D.xl.

They indicate that this central panel is of a variant state, currently unrecorded on the English Short Title Catalogue.

Few mistakes were critical enough to warrant scrapping the sheets already printed, so with a book like the Great Bible we end up with hundreds of small variations between copies of what purport to be the same book

The comparison of the Lodge Bible with other copies of the sixth Great Bible rapidly demonstrates just how common these variations between copies are.

New Testament - Lodge Bible

Rear of Title page

When a bright light is shone through the back of the title page to the New Testament, the opposite effect is observed: the border bears no annotations, whilst the central panel is heavily annotated. It is only when the two images are overlapped that all becomes clear: the central panel to the New Testament title page was originally surrounded with the woodcut border now used for the opening title page.

Clarkson was a tallow-chandler working from the Shambles in Leeds, who provided the Lodge with candles, and was made a Master in 1805.²² We can be certain of the date at which the book was rebound, 1820, and it seems most likely that this was the moment when the sophistication took place.

Furthermore, it was executed by a binder who specialised in Masonic bindings. Creating the tools needed to emboss gilt onto bindings was not cheap - the decorative motif had to be engraved in iron or brass in reverse, which was a skilled job – and binders coveted the tools they owned. This is the reason that bookbinder’s tools were dynastic - they passed from father to son - an indication of their intrinsic value. The binder of the Lodge Bible owned not one, but a whole array of masonic tools, all of which must have been individually produced for his use. The compass and square, the supporting pillars of the Lodge, the ladder, the rule, the moon and stars, the celestial and terrestrial globes; all were created specifically for masonic work. Other motifs, including the symbolic letter ‘G” within a hexagram, were made up of more generic tools.

Many binders of this period signed their work, either boldly, embossed on the spine, or discretely, tucked away on a turn-in, but the binder of the Lodge Bible did not. The most famous Masonic binder was John Lovejoy, but he died in 1818, two years prior to the execution of this binding.²³ Lovejoy’s binding tools were advertised for sale in a contemporary newspaper, and are alleged to have gone to Lovejoy’s foreman, George Rowley, in payment for a debt.²⁴ Rowley certainly did produce cathedral style bindings, but the examples at the British Library are all embossed with a single plate, rather than made up with individual tools.²⁵

We know from examples in the Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London, of various London binders who were members of lodges and who did bindings for their own lodges. Something which may have been considered part of their fraternal duty. Is it possible that a Leeds bookbinder who was also a mason may have produced the Lodge binding? There certainly were bookbinders in Leeds and in the North of England.

The British Booktrade Index lists six binders in Leeds in 1820,²⁷ none of whom appear in the Lodge records as members, and some notable binders elsewhere are known to have had masonic links. Bartholomew Frye of Halifax was a mason, ²⁸ and William Lubbock of Newcastle produced at least one masonic binding, now in the Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London, but it bears little resemblance to the lodge binding.²⁹

There are a number of features which suggest, however, that this is not local work. The tools themselves are the first indicator. Creating this pallet of tools would have been a costly enterprise and none of the local binders thus far identified appear to have been flourishing to the extent that they could have afforded to commission such a wide array of masonic tools. If there had been a local binder using these tools, one would expect to find similar bindings in other local masonic collections. The John Rylands Library holds the combined libraries of the Provincial Grand Lodge of East Lancashire and the Manchester Association of Masonic Research; these tools have not yet been identified within their collection. The second indicator that this might not be a local binder is the sheer quality of the work. London was the centre of the fine binding trade in the 1820s, the trade peopled with some of the finest and most skilled craftsmen of the nineteenth century, men like Charles Lewis and Christian Kalthoeber. In the provinces the work was significantly less sophisticated and less skilled. This binding is so reminiscent of the sort of work being produced by these big London shops for private collectors like Earl Spencer that it surely must be London work.There are precedents to support this. The archives of the Library and Museum of Freemasonry in London record that provincial lodges often asked the officials at the Grand Lodge in London to supply them with masonic bindings, and when this happened it was usually a London binder who did the work.³⁰ There were London binders who were known for their masonic work - a German binder called Henry Walther was a prolific producer of masonic bindings, but none are stylistically similar to the Leeds example and none of the tools match.³¹ A comprehensive survey of the collections of the Library and Museum of Freemasonry in London would be the most likely source for further matches and a possible identification.

Can we learn anything more from the Lodge binding? Like many bindings of its period, it hides a gilded surprise. On opening the front cover, one is faced with a lavishly gold-tooled doublure, which gives some impression of just how stunning this binding would have looked on production. The blue morocco of the front and rear boards has dulled, and much of the gilding has been rubbed off by generations of hands, but inside we see it in its full glory.  Between the three masonic pillars are listed the Lodge members of what was then Philanthropic 568. The list makes for interesting reading and gives some indication of the sorts of men who joined the lodge.

Robert Cout is recorded as a dyer, dealer and chapman, registered bankrupt in 1828.³²  David Kirkman was the proprietor of the Golden Fleece pub on Cross Street, Leeds from at least 1822-1830.³³ Hugh Black, was a guard on the Leeds-London Rockingham,³⁴ famed for his courtesy to his passengers.³⁵ Nathan Firth, the Secretary, was the landlord of the Hare and Hounds, better known as the “Dog and Ratten” on Toller Lane for over 40 years.³⁶ These were working rather than society men, although many would later hold civic positions, following what would become an established route to respectability,³⁷  a route which led through the Lodge.