Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"William Tyndale was born in 1494. He was fluent in French, Greek, Hebrew, German, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and English. A new translation of the Greek Bible into Latin inspired him to make a translation into English. His translation was finally printed in 1526. He then fled to Antwerp. Later he was captured and executed in 1536. A few months after his death, Henry VIII legalized the Tyndale translation. [Secrets of the Dead: Battle for the Bible produced by PBS] "Tyndale's translation was the first English Bible to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, the first English translation to use Jehovah as God's name as preferred by English Protestant Reformers, the first English translation to take advantage of the printing press, and first of the new English Bibles of the Reformation. It was taken to be a direct challenge to the hegemony of both the Roman Catholic Church and the laws of England maintaining the church's position. . . . In 1611, the 54 scholars who produced the King James Bible drew significantly from Tyndale, as well as from translations that descended from his." [Wikipedia]