After the Reformation, it became increasingly common for Protestants, particularly in England, to own vernacular bibles. Some translations, following the tradition of the medieval glossed bibles, had extensive notes printed in the margins. But readers often added their own notes as well. This "Matthew" Bible from the CJS Library is a folio, the largest format for a printed book, and was published in London in 1549 by John Day. Large bibles like this were printed for liturgical use but, given later versions and the brief reassertion of Catholicism by Mary I (1553-8), such bibles migrated into private households. This is clearly the case with this bible, in which there are notes by at least five different readers from the mid-sixteenth century to the eighteenth century.

One seventeenth- or eighteenth-century reader has marked up a passage in Isaiah 44, which has the following printed note at the top of the page: "Christ promeseth to delyuer his churche, whiche he hath redeamed. Idolatry & knelyng before ymages .etc. are confuted." Such attacks upon "idolatry" and images were a common feature of anti-Catholic polemics. But a few pages later, the same reader has written in the margins of Isaiah 51, in mirror writing, a record of an economic transaction: "Iohn Spencer dothe owe me xxs for halfe a yares wagys of the whyche xxs I haue receyved thre nobels." Such secular notes are surprisingly frequent since bibles were secure places to "file" information. At the same time, writing paper remained expensive and scarce until the invention of wood-pulp paper in the nineteenth century and a bible was often the only book that a household owned. Bibles were consequently used not only for exegetical purposes but also for family records, household accounts, and a variety of other notes. Children's alphabets and owners' signatures are two of the commonest forms of writing found in bibles and are frequently found in the margins as well as on the blank pages at the beginning and end.

In this copy, one reader has practiced various letters in the margins of Revelation, while another has tried to copy the capital letter "E" and has got as far as writing "Ely" beside "Elyzabeth" in the printed text. A third reader has twice written his signature, "John Welster," in the margins. Finally, a nineteenth-century reader has inserted a newspaper cutting at Psalm 100. It reads: "'Many persons,' says The Chambers Journal, 'must have been struck with the awkward beginning of the line in the 100th Psalm: 'For why? The Lord our God is good.'"

The truth is, popular ingenuity - represented in this case perhaps by the printer - has taken the liberty of changing the old word, 'forwhy,' meaning 'because,' which gave good sense and translated the original, but which had fallen out of common use, into the modern 'for why?' Surely the restoration of the word might still be attempted before it is too late."

Peter Stallybrass