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John Rogers (Bible editor and martyr)

English Bible editor and martyr (c. 1505 – 1555)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ349235 ↗
Source-derived summary

John Rogers (c. 1505 – 4 February 1555) was an English clergyman, Bible translator and commentator. He guided the development of the Matthew Bible in vernacular English during the reign of Henry VIII and was the first English Protestant executed as a heretic under Mary I.

Biography

Early life

Rogers was born in Deritend, an area of Birmingham then within the parish of Aston. His father was also called John Rogers and was a lorimer – a maker of bits and spurs – whose family came from Aston; his mother was Margaret Wyatt, the daughter of a tanner with family in Erdington and Sutton Coldfield.

Rogers was educated at the Guild School of St John the Baptist in Deritend, and at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge University, where he graduated B.A. in 1526. Between 1532 and 1534 he was rector of Holy Trinity the Less in the City of London.

Antwerp and the Matthew Bible

In 1534, Rogers went to Antwerp as chaplain to the English merchants of the Company of the Merchant Adventurers.

Here he met William Tyndale, under whose influence he abandoned the Roman Catholic faith, and married Antwerp native Adriana de Weyden (b. 1522, anglicised to Adrana Pratt in 1552) in 1537. After Tyndale's death, Rogers pushed on with his predecessor's English version of the Old Testament, which he used as far as 2 Chronicles, employing Myles Coverdale's translation (1535) for the remainder and for the Apocrypha.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “John Rogers (Bible editor and martyr)” as english Bible editor and martyr (c. 1505 – 1555). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around John, Rogers and Bible.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1505, 1555, 1526, 1532—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1500. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with John, Rogers and Bible providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “John Rogers (Bible editor and martyr)”, the useful work is to connect “english Bible editor and martyr (c. 1505 – 1555)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q349235. VIAF identifies the subject as 61571829. The Library of Congress control number is nr90001652. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1505, 1555, 1526 and 1532.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “John Rogers (Bible editor and martyr)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.