Sir Humphrey Monmouth

Sir Humphrey Monmouth was a wealthy merchant in the 16th-century London who amassed wealth selling cloth and clothing to London’s elite. As a wealthy member of the Drapers’ Company Monmouth dwelled in a fashionable quarter of the City serving at the same time as an alderman and later a sheriff of London. Known as a generous patron of scholars, he acquainted a young theologian, William Tyndale in 1524 and offered him a place to stay and support for his work, the first vernacular version of the Bible in English language. When Tyndale was forced to flee from England, Monmouth provided the financial help to his ward. In 1526 Tyndale finished first edition while he was living in Germany, and smuggled the copies to England by hiding them in bolts of cloth. Among his customers was very Sir Humphrey Monmouth. For his avowed Protestantism, he was imprisoned by Sir Thomas More in 1528.