The two sources of Maurice Kyffin’s Deffynniad Ffydd Eglwys Loegr (1595)

Abstract

In this note it is argued that for his Welsh translation of Bishop John Jewel’s Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (first published 1562) Maurice Kyffin did not only use Jewel’s Latin text, as is indicated on the title page and in his address to the reader, but also Lady Anne Cooke Bacon’s English translation, An Apologie or answere in defence of the Churche of Englande (1564). This makes Kyffin’s Deffynniad Ffydd Eglwys Loegr (1595) an example of a ‘contaminated’ translation, which is based on both the original source and a translation into another language, a specific form of indirect, or ‘secondhand’, translation which is not infrequent in the history of translating.