The End of Henry Phillips, the betrayer of William Tyndale

            Henry VIII, in 1530, demanded that Tyndale be brought to England and punished for sedition for publishing the Bible in English. In 1535, while in Antwerp, Belgium, Tyndale was the writing his final revision of the Bible that would form the foundation for later translations. During that time Romanist Henry Phillips, also an Englishman and Oxford graduate, under false pretenses, befriended Tyndale. After gaining Tyndale’s confidence, while walking down a winding street, Phillips signaled soldiers who arrested Tyndale. Shortly thereafter, Tyndale was executed for the crime of printing Bibles in English and rejecting Roman Catholic dogma. This is the early history of what would become the King James Bible.

Of Phillips it is said, “He spent the next few years of his life fleeing from King Henry’s agents…By 1542 he passes from history as a prisoner under threat of losing his eyes or his life.  Disowned by his family, by his country and by almost every prince on the continent and even those with whom he collaborated in his terrible crime, he died – Fox conjectures, “consumed at last with lice.’”  Brina H. Edwards, “Tyndale’s Betrayal and Death,” Christian History 6 (1988), 12-15.