Miles Coverdale

Miles Coverdale (1488?-1569), English translator of the Bible, born in Yorkshire, and educated at the University of Cambridge. Shortly after his ordination as a priest in 1514, he entered the Augustinian monastery at Cambridge. Deeply influenced by the Lutheran beliefs of the prior, the English divine Robert Barnes, Coverdale left the monastery in 1526 to preach against certain ecclesiastical practices, notably confession and image worship.

In 1528 Coverdale moved to the Continent, where he became associated, according to some accounts, with another English translator of the Bible, William Tyndale. In 1535 Coverdale finished the first complete translation of the Bible and the Apocrypha to be printed in English, dedicating the work to Henry VIII, king of England. Its chief attribute is Coverdale's felicitous phraseology, much of which was incorporated into subsequent English versions of the Scriptures. In 1538 he was commissioned by Thomas Cromwell, then vicar-general of England, to oversee the preparation of an official version of the Bible. This work, known as the Great Bible, was completed in 1539. In 1540 Coverdale edited Cranmer's Bible, a revised edition of the Great Bible.

Coverdale fled from England later in 1540, following the execution of Cromwell, and spent the next eight years on the Continent. After his return in 1548 he was appointed chaplain to the Protestant monarch Edward VI. Coverdale subsequently became widely known as a preacher. In 1551 he was appointed bishop of Exeter, a post from which he was removed in 1553 upon the accession of Edward's Catholic half sister Mary I, as queen of England; Coverdale was then imprisoned. Released after two years, he went into exile, spending the next eight years chiefly at Wesel and Bergzabern (now Zweibrücken), Germany, and Geneva. In Geneva he is believed to have participated in the preparation of the Geneva Bible. In 1559, after the accession of Elizabeth I, queen of England, Coverdale returned to England. In 1563 he became rector of the church of Saint Magnus in London, but, refusing to conform with an act calling for rigid observance of the liturgy, he resigned in 1566.