Breeches Bible The Bible Translated according to the Ebrew and Greeke...bound with Two right profitable and fruitfull Concordances...and The Whole Booke of Psalmes. Imprinted at London by Robert Barker, Printer to the King's Most Excellent Maiestie, 1608; Psalms London: Printed for the Companie of Stacioners, 1609. Later rebound (1816) in black crushed morocco, boards with gilt fillet borders around floral roll-tooled borders in blind, central panel gilt with floral corner-pieces enclosing owner's name (M. Thompson, upper board) and date (1816, lower board), flat spine with gilt-fillet and blind floral roll-tooled compartments, speckled edges, marbled endpapers; engraved title for The Bible, separate titles for other two parts, later additional hand-coloured plates showing the arms of the Thompson family and a decorative border. Breeches Bibles are a variant of the Geneva Bible translation. Perhaps the most historically significant English translation of the Bible after the King James Version (KJV), the Geneva Bible (from where the first edition was published in 1560) was probably the first mechanically printed, mass-produced bible available to the general public - especially in a size suitable for non-liturgical use. It was immensely popular, owing in part to the power of its translation. The most significant theological aspect was the glossing and marginalia which were Puritan (and especially Calvinist) in manner - thus often in opposition to the ruling Anglicans of the Church of England and the English government. The popularity was such (Scotland even passing a law requiring households of sufficient means to own a copy) that it spurred Elizabeth I to produce the Bishops' Bible, the Catholics to produce the Douai and Rheims Bible, and ultimately James I to produce the Authorised Version in order to replace it. Such was the importance of the translation - despite official antipathy towards the glossing - the Geneva Bible was an approved source for the translators of the KJV. The Geneva translation was then the bible of Shakespeare, Cromwell, Knox, Donne and Bunyan. This copy is a variant known as a ''Breeches'' Bible owing to a curious translation of a passage from Genesis III.7: ''Then the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed figge tree leaves together, and made themselves breeches.'' In the 1611 KJV this was changed to ''aprons''. This bible was bound for Matthew Thompson (name to upper board and inscription on verso of ffep) in 1816 (date on lower board and inscription). The Thompson arms are displayed on a colourful decorative plate bound between the Old and New Testaments. Intriguingly there is a second colour plate with an elaborate floral border surrounding a blank space. At the top of the border there is a shield with the Thompson arms in the dexter half and a blank space where the impaling arms would go. Although it is impossible to say, it seems likely that this Bible was produced for, or in anticipation of, a wedding. The wife's arms would have been added to the sinister side (if Thompson was advancing to a bishopric or similar his arms would have gone on the junior, sinister side) and presumably the details would have been added, in the fashion of family bibles, to the blank space inside the border.