By Chuck Collins
February 4, 2025
John Rogers was the first of nearly 300 Protestants killed by Mary Tudor in her five-year reign as Queen of England. Other monarchs killed because of treason; Bloody Mary killed to destroy Protestantism in England. Rogers was burned alive at Smithfield February 4, 1555.
His crime was that he brought the English Bible to the English people, and he refused to apologize for it at the end. Rogers was a Church of England minister, Vicar of St. Sepulchre’s in London, before he moved to Antwerp Belgium where he met William Tyndale. There he became a committed "evangelical" (Protestant). The two of them became fast friends and when Tyndale was captured and killed, John Rogers picked up and completed the project that Tyndale started.
He used Tyndale's New Testament English translation and what Tyndale finished of the Old Testament (and the rest of the Old Testament completed by Myles Coverdale), and published the first English translation of the whole Bible. He did this under the pseudonym Thomas Matthew, thus it was call the "Matthew Bible."
Rogers sent a copy of the Matthew Bible to Lord Chancellor Thomas Cromwell who, in turn, showed it to King Henry VIII. Five years after Henry broke with Rome to start the Church of England and two years after the publication of the Matthew Bible, Henry surprised everyone by authorizing the Great Bible in 1539. The Great Bible was the Matthew Bible without the Protestant notes and commentary. To everyone's surprise, Henry, the dyed-in-the-wool Catholic monarch, mandated that a copy of an English translation of the Bible be placed in every church, and that it be read at every church service.
Translating the Bible into English was a very important factor that moved the new Church of England towards Reformation and Protestantism. For the first time in 1,500 years the written word of God was available for common people to read! It wouldn't be long before they learned the Bible’s central teaching: justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
An immense crowd lined the roads in Smithfield, just within eyesight of St. Sepulchre’s Church. There were reports that Rogers went “steadily and unflinchingly into a fiery grave.” Even the French Ambassador who was present that day wrote in a letter that Rogers went to death “as if he was walking to his wedding.”
Five English Reformers, J.C. Ryle
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