THE MATTHEW BIBLE.

The Bible was first published in 1537 by John Rogers, under the pseudonym "Thomas Matthew." John Rogers was a clergyman who was born in Derit-End, an area of Birming-Ham then within the large parish of Aston, an area in Central Birming-Ham, in West Mid-Lands of England. His father was a maker of bits (type of horse tack placed in the mouth to assist the rider in communicating with the animal) and spurs (used on the heels of riding boots to direct the horse to move forward or laterally when ridind), and his ancestors came from Aston. His mother was Margareth Wyatt, the daughter of a tanner with family in Erdington and Sutton Cold-Field.
Rogers was educated at the Guild School of St John the Baptist in Deritent, a mansion house of timber where they assembled. He graduated at the Hall of Valence Mary, Cambridge, in 1526. The statutes were notable on those days and they gave preference to students born in France who already studied elsewhere in England and that they required students to report fellow students if they indulged in excessive drinking or visited disreputable houses. In 1534, Rogers went to Ant-Werp as chaplain to the English merchants of the Company of the Merchant Adventurers. This company brought together London's leading overseas merchants in a regulated company in the nature of a guild. Its members' main business was the export of cloth, especially white (undyed) broadcloth. This enable them to import a large range of foreign goods. Similar groups of investors all connected were formed to develop overseas trade and colonies in the New World.
Rogers met William Tyndale when he was in Ant-Werp, under whose influence he abandoned the Roman Catholic body and married Ant-Werp native Adriana de Weyden 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. Although it is claimed that Rogers was the first person to ever print a complete English Bible that was translated directly from the original Greek&Hebrew, there was also a reliance upon a Latin translation of the Hebrew Bible by Sebastian Munster and published in 1534/5.
Tyndale's New Testament had been published in 1526. The complete Bible was put out under the pseudonym of Thomas Matthew in 1537. It was printed in Paris and Ant-Werp by Adriana's uncle, Sir Jacobus Van Meteren.
Aston was first mentioned in the Domesday Book in 1806 as "Estone," having a mill, a priest, woodland and plough land.
The Domesday Book is a manuscript record of the Grat Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William the Bastard (1028-1087), the son of the unmarried Robert I, Duke of Normandy, by Robert's mistress Herleva. His illegitimate status and his youth caused difficulties for him after he succeeded his father, as did the anarchy that plagued his rule.
He was the first Norman King of England (1066-1087). He, the descendant of Viking raiders, had been Duke of Normandy since 1035. After a long struggle to establish his power, by 1060 his hold on Normandy was secure, and he launched the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The rest of his life was marked by struggles to consolidate his hold over England and his continental lands.