An Evening of History and Drama
A Memorable Evening at St Peter's Church: The Tyndale Quincentenary Performance
St Albans, 15 October 2026
On the evening of Thursday, 15 October 2026, St Peter's Church in St Albans played host to a remarkable event: a one-hour dramatic performance marking the 500th anniversary of William Tyndale's English New Testament. The performance, entitled The Book That Changed the World: William Tyndale and the Battle for the English Bible, was written and presented by Professor Tim Boatswain, with Bishop Rob Gillion and Caroline Godden performing alongside him.
The event began at 7 pm, and the church was packed with an attentive audience eager to learn more about the man who risked everything to translate the Bible into English. This was not merely a lecture but a vivid evocation of Tyndale's world, combining narration, visual media, and dramatic dialogue.
The performance was part of the 2026 quincentenary programme honouring the deep historical connection between St Albans and Worms, the German city where Tyndale's forbidden English New Testament first came off the printing press in 1526. St Albans has been twinned with Worms since 1957, and the choice of venue was no accident: St Peter's Church, with its rich history and connection to the city's heritage, provided the perfect setting to honour this shared legacy.
The evening was not only a commemoration of a past event but also a living engagement with the values of freedom, access, and truth that Tyndale embodied.
In the first half of the performance, Tim Boatswain traced Tyndale's life with clarity and sympathy: his birth in Gloucestershire around 1494, his brilliant linguistic education at Oxford and Cambridge, his fateful declaration that he would cause "a boy that driveth the plough" to know more Scripture than learned clerics, his flight to Germany, and his clandestine work of translation in Wittenberg, Cologne, and finally Worms
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The story of his betrayal by Henry Phillips, his imprisonment in the cold castle of Vilvoorde, and his execution on 6 October 1536 was told with restraint and gravity. The performance made clear the sheer daring of his project: smuggling New Testaments into England, publishing the Pentateuch from the Hebrew, and continuing his revisions even as the net closed around him
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The second half was the dramatic highlight: an imagined face-to-face debate between Tyndale and Jacobus Latomus, the Leuven theologian and heresy-hunter who interrogated him in prison. Here, the performance came alive: introduced by Caroline Godden as narrator with Tim Boatswain, playing Latomus, as he accused Tyndale, who was portrayed by Bishop Rob Gillion, of pride, of casting the Greek text into "vulgar English," and of undermining the Church's authority to interpret Scripture.
Tyndale responded with the conviction that the gospel was "living bread to be broken and shared," that the ploughboy and the serving maid deserved to hear God speak in their own tongue, and that the Church had no right to keep the Word chained.
The dialogue drew on real historical debates about language, such as translating ecclesia as "congregation" rather than "church," presbyteros as "elder" rather than "priest," and agape as "love" rather than "charity." Latomus was no cartoon villain; he genuinely believed that unguided interpretation of the Bible would breed chaos and heresy. Tyndale, for his part, was no reckless radical; he appealed to the Bereans of Acts 17, who searched the Scriptures daily to verify even the Apostle Paul's teaching.
The exchange ended with Tyndale's defiance: "Do what you will with my body, for the word will not be bound." The final focus on his dying cry, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!", proved to be a profoundly moving conclusion.
What was striking about the evening was how effectively it connected a sixteenth-century struggle to our own age. Tyndale's story is not merely about religion; it is about language, power, and access to knowledge. In an era of information overload, we easily forget that the simple act of translating a book into the language of ordinary people was once a revolutionary act, which could cost a person their life
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The performance made clear that Tyndale was more than a martyr; he was a master linguistic architect whose phrasing, with phrases like "let there be light," "the powers that be," "fight the good fight," "my brother's keeper," and "the spirit is willing" which are still echoes in our daily speech. He introduced words like "atonement," "Passover," "Jehovah," and "scapegoat" to the English language, and an estimated 80 to 90 per cent of the King James Version's New Testament retains his exact wording.
Following the performance, attendees were invited to a Q & A session, and there were many interesting and illuminating questions and contributions. Then Tim Boatswain was delighted to present Mark Dearnley, the Vicar of St Peter's Church, with a book from Worms that focused on Martin Luther, who had made such an impact at the Diet of Worms - a huge contribution to Protestantism.
Finally, attendees were invited to enjoy a glass of wine or a soft drink. This informal gathering provided an opportunity to reflect on the evening's themes and to discuss the enduring significance of Tyndale's work with fellow attendees and the performers themselves.
The refreshments were a fitting conclusion to an evening that had been both intellectually stimulating and emotionally moving, allowing the audience to linger in the atmosphere of history, drama, and hope that the performance had created.
I left St Peter's Church with a profound sense of gratitude: for all those who have helped make it possible; for bringing Tyndale and Latomus to life with such skill and sensitivity; to the organisers at St Peter's Church and St Albans Cathedral for curating such a memorable event; and to all those who contributed to making the evening a success.
The quincentenary was not merely a commemoration of a past event. It served as a vital reminder of the battle for the Bible: for access to Scripture in the vernacular and for the right of ordinary people to read and interpret the word of God. It was fought and won at great cost. And it was a celebration of the enduring power of the printed word to challenge authority, democratise knowledge, and shape the soul of a nation
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St Albans and Worms, twinned in history, have done honour to William Tyndale. I am deeply grateful to have been part of the commemoration, and I will carry the memory of that performance for a long time to come.
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