COVERDALE, MILES, Bishop o Exeter, a native of Yorkshire, was born in 1487. lie was educated iu the house of the Augustin friars in Cambridge, of which Dr. Barnes, afterwards one of the Protestant martyrs, was thee prior. Whether he took a degree at the Uuiver rity of Cambridge in early life seem, uncertain ; but Goodwin says he afterwards received the degree of D.D. from the University of Tilbingen, and was, though later in life, admitted 'ad cundetn ' at Cambridge. Being in his early years nttachsd to the religion in which he was brought up, he became an Augustin monk. In 1514 he entered into holy orders, and was ordained at Norwich ; but he afterwards changed his religious opinions. Bale says he was one of the first who, together with Dr. Robert Barnes, his 'quondam' prior, taught the purity of the gospel, and dedicated himself wholly to the service of the Reformation. About this time, probably 1530 or 1531, the reformed religion began to show itself at Cambridge, where various eminent men, and Miles Coverdale amongst them, began to assemble for conference on those points which had been discussed by the reformers abroad. In 1532 he appears to have been abroad, and assisted Tyndale in his translation of the Bible; and io 1535 his own trauslation of the Bible appeared, with a dedication to King Henry VIII It formed a folio volume, printed, sa Humphrey Wauley thought, from the appearance of the types, at Zurich, by Christopher Eros chover. He thus had the honour of editing the first English Bible allowed by royal authority, and the first translation of the whole Bible printed in our language. The Psalms in it are those now used in the Book of Common Prayer. About the end of the year 1538 Coverdalo went abroad again on the business of a new edition of the Bible. Grafton, the English printer, had permission from Francis I., at the request of King Henry VIII. himself, to print a Bible at Paris, on account of the superior skill of the workmen, and the goodness and cheapness of the paper. But, notwithstanding the royal licence, the Inquisition interposed by an instrument dated December 17, 1533. The French printers, their English employers, and Coverdale, who was the corrector of the press, were summoned before the inquisitors, and the impression, consisting of 2500 copies, was seized and con demned to the flames. The avarice of the officer who superintended the burning of the copies however, induced him to sell several chests of them to a haberdasher, for the purpose of wrapping his wares, by which means a few copies were preserved. The English proprietors, who had fled at the alarm, returned to Paris when it subsided; and not only recovered some of the copies which had escaped the fire, but brought with them to London the presses, types, and printers. This importation enabled Grafton and Whitchurch to print, in 1539, what is called Cmumer's, or 'The Great Bible,' in which Covordale com pared the translation with the Hebrew, corrected it in many places, and was the chief overseer of the work. Coverdalo was almoner, some
time afterward, to Queen Catherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII., at whose funeral he officiated in the chapel of Sudeley Castle, in Gloucestershire, in 1548. On August 14, 1551, he succeeded Dr. John Harman, otherwise Voysey, in the see of Exeter. On his appoint ment to this bishopric, Coverdale was so poor as to be unable to pay the first-fruits, which therefore the king, at the solicitation of Arch bishop Cranmer, excused. On the accession of Queen Mary, and the consequent re-establishment of Catholicism, he was ejected from his see, and thrown into prison, out of which he was released after two yearn' imprisoument, at the earnest request of the King of Denmark, whose chaplain, Dr. John Machabteua, had married the sister of Cover dale's wife. On his release, which was on the condition of banishing himself, Coverdale repaired to the court of Denmark ; he went after wards to Wesel, thence to Bergzabern, and finally to Geneva, where he joined several other English exiles in producing that version of the English Bible which is usually called ' The Geneva Translation ; ' part of which, the New Testament, was printed at Geneva in 1557, by Conrad Basile; and again in 1560, in which last year the whole Bible was printed in the same place by Rowland Hartz. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth, Coverdalo returned from exile ; but having imbibed the principles of the Geneva reformers, as far as respected the ecclesiastical habits and ceremonies, ho was not allowed to resume his bishopric, nor was any preferment offered to him for a considerable time. In 1563 Bishop Griudal recommended him to the bishopric of Llandaff; but it is supposed that Coverdale's age and infirmities, and the remains of the plague, from which he had just recovered, made him decline so great a charge. In lieu of it, however, the bishop collated him to the rectory of St. Magnus London Bridge. He resigned this living in 1566. Tho date of his death has been variously stated. The parish register of St. Bartholomew, behind the Royal Ezchnnge, however, proves that he was buried February 19, 1563, in the chancel -of which church a Latin epitaph for him re mained till it was destroyed along with the church in the great fire of 1666. Coverdale was the author of several tracts calculated to pro mote the doctrines of the Reformation, and of several translations from the writings of the foreign reformers.
The third centenary of the publication of Coverdale's Bible was cele brated by the clergy throughout the churches of England, October 4, 1835 ; and several medals were struck upon the occasion.