Reformation Day 2010

Every year, we set aside a couple days in October to study some aspect of the Protestant Reformation. My intent this year was to study the English Reformation and focus on the men who were at one time or another associated with the study group at the White Horse Inn in Cambridge. As I began preparing for this study, however, I quickly realized that we could not adequately cover all of the men associated with the White Horse Inn in a day or two. So I decided to narrow our focus to two men: Thomas Bilney and William Tyndale.

LMH was given the assignment of writing about Bilney's conversion (here). SJH wrote about Bilney's first trial and his abjuration (here), and ASH wrote about Bilney's last trial and execution (here). For background information, I gave them each excerpts from J. H. Merle D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation and a Wikipedia article about Bilney.

Since SJH had previously written a biographical essay of William Tyndale (here), I gave KGH the unusual assignment of writing a fictional story about William Tyndale's days with the Walsh family from the perspective of Catherine Walsh (here).* I contributed an essay about the role of the Word of God in the English Reformation (here).

In addition to their writing assignments, LMH, SJH, and ASH worked on other projects as well. LMH took a hymn (Trinity Hymnal #299) and set it to a new tune. SJH illuminated I Chronicles 16:34, and ASH prepared a polyglot version of I Timothy 1:15 in Greek, Latin, and Tyndale's English.

Because of a death in the family, we had to forego our usual afternoon of Medieval games.

*J.H. Merle D'Aubigne writes that William Tyndale was hired by Sir John Walsh to tutor his two small sons. However, according to Ancestry.com, Sir John Walsh married Ann Dinley, and together they had four children: Catherine (1510), Maurice (1515), Ann (1515), and Mabell (1517). After Ann Dinley Walsh died, Sir John married Anne Pointz, and together they had one daughter, Margaret (1525).