"There have been many versions of the Holy Scriptures since the KING JAMES VERSION was published but not one committee of these versions has suffered for their faith except the committee of the KING JAMES VERSION. Some were imprisoned or threatened with imprisonment.
David Otis Fuller seems to have been misinformed concerning the KJV translators.
While the persecution of Puritans was not as severe during part of the time of George Abbot, who had been a KJV translator, as Archbishop as it had been under Archbishop Richard Bancroft, it did not completely end. The High Commission Court still remained. Under Abbot, Robert Dale maintained that “clergymen who omitted the ceremonies were still silenced, and Separatists were still thrown into prison, and kept without trial; but the vigor with which offenders had been hunted down by Bancroft ceased” (
History, p. 211). James Miall also noted: “In the meantime, but less vigorously after the death of Bancroft, the severities against the Puritans continued” (
Footsteps, p. 85). J. B. Marsden reported that Puritan Arthur Hildersham was summoned before the High Commission Court in 1612 and suspended (
History, p. 287). Marsden noted in 1615 Hildersham was again before the High Commission and for refusing the oath
exofficio was committed to Fleet Prison (
Ibid.). Alexander Drysdale noted that “Hildersham was repeatedly suspended, fined, imprisoned, and even excommunicated” (
History, p. 241). When Bishop of Gloucester Miles Smith [KJV translator with Puritan leanings] is said to have neglected some matters, King James I made William Laud Dean of Gloucester in 1616 and permitted Laud to take actions of which Miles Smith disapproved.
The Dictionary of National Biography noted in a case involving Puritan clergyman Edmund Peacham that [KJV translator] George Abbot "approved the use of torture" (I, p. 11). George Perry asserted that for his answer to a request for benevolence, Peacham was thrown into the Tower and his study searched. George Perry reported: “Peacham was indicted of treason, for divers treasonable passages in a sermon which was never preached, nor intended to be preached, but only set down in writings and found in his study” (
History, I, p. 226). George Perry stated that
“Peacham was examined ‘before torture, in torture, between torture, and after torture’” (
Ibid., p. 227). William Urwick maintained that “James condemned to the scaffold, after torturing, the white-haired Old Puritan, Peacham, once a Hertfordshire minister, who died before the sentence was executed” (
Nonconformity in Herts, p. 121).
In his history of English Baptists published in 1871, J. J. Goadby described King James I as "the meanest and most despicable sovereign that ever held an English sceptre" (
Bye-Paths in Baptist History, p. 80). He described how James I dealt roughly with Baptists. Another history of English Baptists by Thomas Crosby also told how King James and his state church persecuted Baptists with fines, imprisonments, dispossessions of property, beatings, expulsions, and even burning at the stake. S. H. Ford wrote that "almost canonized head of the Episcopal Church [King James] thus, in the name of Christ, authorized poor Wightman's death" (
Origin of the Baptist, p. 21). Phil Stringer observed that Wightman was burned at the stake "for declaring that baptism of infants was an abominable custom" or "for being a Baptist" (
Faithful Baptist Witness, p. 7). William Cutter wrote: “Edward Wightman, ancestor of the American family, was condemned to death and burned at the stake, April 11, 1611, because of his Baptist faith” (
New England Families, Vol. 1, p. 36). Cathcart's
Baptist Encyclopedia noted that King James treated Baptists with "royal barbarity" (p. 75). J. W. Griffith observed that King James and his government "vigorously tried to prevent the preaching of Baptists, driving them into hiding, imprisoning their ministers and deacons and sometimes entire congregations, imposing enormous and ruinous fines on those arrested for unlawful assembly and preaching" (
Manual of Church History, III, p. 84). J. M. Cramp contented that Baptists suffered severely during the reign of James I (
Baptist History, p. 260). Timothy Fellows noted that the Puritans rejected the KJV "because it was dedicated to a wicked king" (
God Hath Spoken, p. 130).