The Lacuna Project

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Exhibit 496

Bishop Tunstall's mandate calling in English New Testaments

Exhibit 496 ยท Episcopal mandate (printed in Foxe, 1563)

Bishop Tunstall's mandate calling in English New Testaments

all and singular such books conteyning the translation of the new testament in the English tongue

Orders the archdeacons to require, within thirty days, delivery to the bishop's vicar-general of all books containing the New Testament translated into English, under excommunication and suspicion of heresy, and states the reason as translators 'maintainers of Luther's sect' mixing heretical articles into the text.

Source
Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London
Date
24 October 1526
Quoted from
Pollard, Records of the English Bible (1911), Record XV, p. 134 (English version printed in Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 1563, pp. 449-50)
Grade
Reported
Document
https://archive.org/details/recordsofenglish00polluoft
Accessed
2026-11-09
Cited by
Findings citing this exhibit
Note
Known through Foxe's 1563 printing, 37 years later; Pollard corrected obvious misprints. Latin date reads 24 October; the English version reads 'xxiii'.

Cited by

Finding REL-2.3
Primary record A royal proclamation of June 1530 forbade having the New or Old Testament in English except persons appointed by the king and the bishops to correct the translation, forbade printing English Scripture without the diocesan's approval, and stated that its distribution "dependeth onely vpon the discretion of the superiours."