Humphrey Toy (1537 – 16 October 1577) was a British bookseller and publisher, and the son of bookseller Robert Toy. In 1567, he published the first translation of New Testament in Welsh from the original Greek, translated by his close friend William Salesbury. [1] Along with the Bible, Toy published the first translation of the Book of Common Prayer in Welsh, also translated by Salesbury. [2]
Toy was born around 1537, the son of Robert Toy, a bookseller, and his wife who died in 1546. The Toy family was of Welsh origin. In 1551, Toy entered Queens' College, Cambridge as a sizar, but he left Cambridge before earning a degree. [3] After Robert Toy died in 1556, most of his property passed to Toy's stepmother Elizabeth Toy with the provision that it would pass to Humphrey after her death. Until her death around 1558, Toy assisted his stepmother in running his father's shop and publishing interests. At some point during this period, Toy married Margaret Revell. [2]
Toy entered work with the Stationer's Company in August 1560, and served as the company's renter warden from 1561 to 1563. Toy later rose through the ranks of the company, and served twice as its underwarden in 1571 and 1573. [2] While working at the Stationer's Company, Toy took control of the bookshop that he inherited from his father and stepmother. Toy's shop was known as the Helmet, because of the helmet depicted on its sign, and Toy was granted a seventy-year lease on the location of the shop. [4]
While at the Stationer's Company, Toy became an active printer and publisher, and became particularly interested in religious works. He worked closely with Christopher Plantin of Antwerp, who helped Toy acquire a large collection of European protestant works. Toy also entered into a dispute, along with three other printers, with Richard Jugge, over the right to print Bibles in English. [2]
Possibly because of his Welsh background, Toy formed a friendship with the Welsh scholar William Salesbury, and worked with him professionally on several occasions. [2] In 1567, Toy financed and published Salesbury's translation of New Testament in Welsh, the first translation made into Welsh from the original Greek. That same year, Toy financed and published Salesbury's translation of the Book of Common Prayer into Welsh, the first such translation. [5]
Both the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer were printed by Henry Bynneman, with financing and oversight from Toy. [6] Toy was recognized on the first page of Book of Common Prayer for providing "the costes and charges" of the publication. [7]
After the Book of Common Prayer and New Testament, Toy also published a guide to Welsh pronunciation, and several smaller works for Salesbury. [2]
Toy died on 16 October 1577 and was buried at All Saints' Church, Bristol. After his death, his widow Margaret and his apprentice Thomas Chard took control of his estate, and continued his work in both publishing and bookselling. [2] Chard operated the Helmet until 1585, and it subsequently changed hands several times before disappearing in 1607. [4]
Approximately thirty works printed by Toy are still in existence; among these, an edition of Richard Grafton's Chronicle that he printed is the most notable. [2]
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV) is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of King James VI and I. The 80 books of the King James Version include 39 books of the Old Testament, 14 books of Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament.
The Matthew Bible, also known as Matthew's Version, was first published in 1537 by John Rogers, under the pseudonym "Thomas Matthew". It combined the New Testament of William Tyndale, and as much of the Old Testament as he had been able to translate before being captured and put to death. Myles Coverdale translated chiefly from German and Latin sources and completed the Old Testament and Biblical apocrypha, except for the Prayer of Manasseh, which was Rogers', into the Coverdale Bible. It is thus a vital link in the main sequence of English Bible translations.
William Salesbury also Salusbury was the leading Welsh scholar of the Renaissance and the principal translator of the 1567 Welsh New Testament.
William Morgan was a Welsh Bishop of Llandaff and of St Asaph, and the translator of the first version of the whole Bible into Welsh from Greek and Hebrew.
This article presents lists of literary events and publications in the 16th century.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1567.
Richard Davies was a Welsh bishop and scholar.
Parts of the Bible have been translated into Welsh since at least the 15th century, but the most widely used translation of the Bible into Welsh for several centuries was the 1588 translation by William Morgan, Y Beibl cyssegr-lan sef Yr Hen Destament, a'r Newydd as revised in 1620. The Beibl Cymraeg Newydd was published in 1988 and revised in 2004. Beibl.net is a translation in colloquial Welsh which was completed in 2013.
Robert Crowley, was a stationer, poet, polemicist and Protestant clergyman among Marian exiles at Frankfurt. He seems to have been a Henrician Evangelical in favour of a more reformed Protestantism than the king and the Church of England sanctioned. Under Edward VI, he joined a London network of evangelical stationers to argue for reforms, sharing a vision of his contemporaries Hugh Latimer, Thomas Lever, Thomas Beccon and others of England as a reformed Christian commonwealth. He attacked as inhibiting reform what he saw as corruption and uncharitable self-interest among the clergy and wealthy. Meanwhile, Crowley took part in making the first printed editions of Piers Plowman, the first translation of the Gospels into Welsh, and the first complete metrical psalter in English, which was also the first to include harmonised music. Towards the end of Edward's reign and later, Crowley criticised the Edwardian Reformation as compromised and saw the dissolution of the monasteries as replacing one form of corruption by another. On his return to England after the reign of Mary I, Crowley revised his chronicle to represent the Edwardian Reformation as a failure, due to figures like Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset and John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland. Crowley's account of the Marian martyrs represented them as a cost mostly paid by commoners. The work became a source for John Foxe's account of the period in his Actes and Monuments. Crowley held church positions in the early to mid-1560s and sought change from the pulpit and within the church hierarchy. Against the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, Crowley was a leader in the renewed vestments controversy, which eventually lost him his clerical posts. During the dispute he and other London clergy produced a "first Puritan manifesto". Late in life Crowley was restored to several church posts and appears to have charted a more moderate course in defending it from Roman Catholicism and from nonconformist factions that espoused a Presbyterian church polity.
Thomas Guy was an English bookseller, member of Parliament, and the founder of Guy's Hospital, London.
Richard Jugge was an eminent English printer, who kept a shop at the sign of the Bible, at the North door of St Paul's Cathedral, though his residence was in Newgate market, next to Christ Church Greyfriars in London. He is generally credited as the inventor of the footnote. His business was run under the name of his widow Joan Jugge after he died.
Henry Bynneman, was an English printer of the 16th century.
The Coverdale Bible, compiled by Myles Coverdale and published in 1535, was the first complete Modern English translation of the Bible, and the first complete printed translation into English. The later editions published in 1537 were the first complete Bibles printed in England. The 1537 folio edition carried the royal licence and was therefore the first officially approved Bible translation in English. The Psalter from the Coverdale Bible was included in the Great Bible of 1540 and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer beginning in 1662, and in all editions of the U.S. Episcopal Church Book of Common Prayer until 1979.
The biblical apocrypha denotes the collection of apocryphal ancient books thought to have been written some time between 200 BC and AD 400. The Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches include some or all of the same texts within the body of their version of the Old Testament, with Catholics terming them deuterocanonical books. Traditional 80-book Protestant Bibles include fourteen books in an intertestamental section between the Old Testament and New Testament called the Apocrypha, deeming these useful for instruction, but non-canonical. To this date, the Apocrypha are "included in the lectionaries of Anglican and Lutheran Churches". Anabaptists use the Luther Bible, which contains the Apocrypha as intertestamental books; Amish wedding ceremonies include "the retelling of the marriage of Tobias and Sarah in the Apocrypha". Moreover, the Revised Common Lectionary, in use by most mainline Protestants including Methodists and Moravians, lists readings from the Apocrypha in the liturgical calendar, although alternate Old Testament scripture lessons are provided.
William Ponsonby was a prominent London publisher of the Elizabethan era. Active in the 1577–1603 period, Ponsonby published the works of Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, and other members of the Sidney circle; he has been called "the leading literary publisher of Elizabethan times."
This article is about the particular significance of the century 1501–1600 to Wales and its people.
A Protestant Bible is a Christian Bible whose translation or revision was produced by Protestant Christians. Typically translated into a vernacular language, such Bibles comprise 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament, for a total of 66 books. Some Protestants use Bibles which also include 14 additional books in a section known as the Apocrypha bringing the total to 80 books. This is in contrast with the 73 books of the Catholic Bible, which includes seven deuterocanonical books as a part of the Old Testament. The division between protocanonical and deuterocanonical books is not accepted by all Protestants who simply view books as being canonical or not and therefore classify books found in the Deuterocanon, along with other books, as part of the Apocrypha. Sometimes the term "Protestant Bible" is simply used as a shorthand for a bible which contains only the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments.
In addition to English, literature has been written in a wide variety of other languages in Britain, that is the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. This includes literature in Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Latin, Cornish, Anglo-Norman, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Manx, and Irish. Literature in Anglo-Saxon is treated as English literature and literature in Scots as Scottish literature.
The Testament Newydd ein Arglwydd Iesu Christ is an early Welsh translation of the New Testament.
The early modern period in Wales is the period in the history of Wales from 1500 to 1800.