The finger bone of Miles Coverdale, bible translator
This exquisite little box encloses the metacarpal bone of the right forefinger of Miles Coverdale [1488–1569]. Like Martin Luther, Coverdale was a former Augustinian friar. Swept up by evangelical ideas, by 1528 he had abandoned his order and fled overseas. He is best known for his work as a bible translator: his handsome volume of the complete Scriptures was published, probably in Antwerp, in 1535. Coverdale served as Bishop of Exeter between 1551–3, but went into renewed exile in Denmark and Switzerland following the accession of Catholic Queen Mary I. In Elizabeth’s reign he briefly held the living of St Magnus the Martyr by London Bridge and was connected with the publication of an important edition of the letters of the Marian martyrs. He died in February 1569 and was buried in the chancel of St Bartholomew by the Exchange in London, under the altar. When the church was demolished to make way for the new Royal Exchange, his remains were disinterred in 1840 and moved to the rebuilt Wren church of St Magnus the Martyr, where there is a tablet to his memory on the east wall. During the process of exhumation, the finger bone was ‘procured’ by William Lowe, whose name appears on the engraved plaque on the side of the box, which is made from the wood of Coverdale’s original coffin. Attesting to the vitality of Victorian interest in the English Reformation, this fascinating remnant of one of England’s earliest and most illustrious Protestants may be seen as a reformed relic. AW
The Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, by kind permission of the Master and Fellows