January 16, 1604 – John Rainolds

The Church of England had a number of detractors in the early 1600s and the Puritans were leading the pack. One of the giants of Puritanism was the president of the Corpus Christi College at Oxford named John Rainolds (sometimes spelled as Reynolds). On January 16, 1604, he asked King James to put together a new Bible “that there might bee a newe translation of the Bible, as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek.” King James agreed to do just that the next day and the seven-year journey of creating what we know as the King James Bible had begun. This is a picture of the choir chancel where Rainolds is buried in the Corpus Christi College chapel at Oxford.