There were a few small parts translated into English prior to Wycliffe, and one even was large enough to include the Gospels. However, there was no attempt to translate the entire Bible into the current form of English until Wycliffe, and he undertook it because he believed it undermined the Catholic Church - a view the Catholic Church seemed to agree with, since it went to such lengths to prevent its spread.
As for literacy rates, I don’t care if it was 5% or 75%. That there was a hunger for reading the Bible is proved by the willingness to copy and spread Wycliffe’s translation in spite of the risk. People don’t risk their lives or wealth to get a book they cannot read.
Ditto with Tyndale’s translation, which was printed, smuggled in and distributed at great risk. People don’t do that for something they cannot read.
The first Bibles printed by printing presses were the sort far too expensive for most people to afford. Wycliffe’s hand copied Bibles (and extracts, since many could not afford an entire Bible) were cheaper, and Tyndale’s were intended to be a cheap as possible for the widest distribution possible.
Nor was the problem just literacy and cost. When King Henry finally agreed to have a Bible published, he ordered it distributed (and chained for security) to every church. This allowed those who could read to come and see for themselves what scripture said.
“Since the Wyclif Bible conformed fully to Catholic teaching, in practice, there was no way that the ecclesiastical authorities could distinguish it, and accordingly the many manuscripts of the Wyclif version were mistakenly believed to demonstrate an unauthorized Roman Catholic version of the New Testament dating from about 1400; a view endorsed and repeated by many Catholic commentators, including Thomas More.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English_Bible_translations
“Misuse of the sacred text by the Albigensians in France, by the Lollards in England, by the Hussites in Bohemia, and by other heretics compelled the Church to adopt a conservative attitude as we see in the history of early first century heresies”
IOW, basing their doctrine on scripture instead of Sacred Tradition threatened the Catholic Church, which chose to try to keep scripture out of the hands of commoners as a matter of policy.
As Tyndale wrote in The Obedience of a Christian Man:
“They will say haply, the scripture requireth a pure mind and a quiet mind; and therefore the lay-man, because he is altogether cumbered with worldly business, cannot understand them. If that be the cause, then it is a plain case that our prelates understand not the scriptures themselves: for no layman is so tangled with worldly business as they are. The great things of the world are ministered by them; neither do the lay-people any great thing, but at their assignment. ‘If the scripture were in the mother tongue,’ they will say, ‘then would the lay-people understand it, every man after his own ways.’ Wherefore serveth the curate, but to teach him the right way? Wherefore were the holy days made, but that the people should come and learn? Are ye not abominable schoolmasters, in that ye take so great wages, if ye will not teach? If ye would teach, how could ye do it so well, and with so great profit, as when the lay-people have the scripture before them in their mother tongue? For then should they see, by the order of the text, whether thou jugglest or not: and then would they believe it, because it is the scripture of God, though thy living be never so abominable...If they will not let the lay-man have the word of God in his mother tongue, yet let the priests have it; which for a great part of them do understand no Latin at all, but sing, and say, and patter all day, with the lips only, that which the heart understandeth not.”
http://www.godrules.net/library/tyndale/19tyndale7.htm
The problem wasn’t that the Catholic Church COULD not, it was that it WILLED not. As a matter of policy, the Church was opposed to commoners learning the scripture in English (or German, where Luther’s translation helped so much).
“The sermons which thou readest in the Acts of the apostles, and all that the apostles preached, were no doubt preached in the mother tongue. Why then might they not be written in the mother tongue? As, if one of us preach a good sermon, why may it not be written? Saint Jerom also translated the bible into his mother tongue: why may not we also? They will say it cannot be translated into our tongue, it is so rude. It is not so rude as they are false liars. For the Greek tongue agreeth more with the English than with the Latin. And the properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more with the English than with the Latin. The manner of speaking is both one; so that in a thousand places thou needest not but to translate it into the English, word for word; when thou must seek a compass in the Latin, and yet shall have much work to translate it well-favoredly, so that it have the same grace and sweetness, sense and pure understanding with it in the Latin, and as it hath in the Hebrew. A thousand parts better may it be translated into the English, than into the Latin...
... They will say yet more shamefully, that no man can understand the scriptures without philautia , that is to say, philosophy. A man must be first well seen in Aristotle, ere he can understand the scripture, say they.
Aristotle’s doctrine is, that the world was without beginning, and shall be without end; and that the first man never was, and the last shall never be; and that God doth all of necessity, neither careth what we do, neither will ask any accounts of that we do. Without this doctrine, how could we understand the scripture, that saith, God created the world of nought; and God worketh all things of his free will, and for a secret purpose; and that we shall all rise again, and that God will have accounts of all that we have done in this life!...
... Howbeit, my meaning is, that as a master teacheth his apprentice to know all the points of the mete-yard; first, how many inches, how many feet, and the half-yard, the quarter, and the nail; and then teacheth him to mete other things thereby: even so will I that ye teach the people God’s law, and what obedience God requireth of us to father and mother, master, lord, king, and all superiors, and with what friendly love he commandeth one to love another; and teach them to know that natural venom and birth-poison, which moveth the very hearts of us to rebel against the ordinances and will of God; and prove that no man is righteous in the sight of God, but that we are all damned by the law: and then, when thou hast meeked them and feared them with the law, teach them the testament and promises which God hath made unto us in Christ, and how much he loveth us in Christ; and teach them the principles and the ground of the faith, and what the sacraments signify: and then shall the Spirit work with thy preaching, and make them feel. So would it come to pass, that as we know by natural wit what followeth of a true principle of natural reason; even so, by the principles of the faith, and by the plain scriptures, and by the circumstances of the text, should we judge all men’s exposition, and all men’s doctrine, and should receive the best, and refuse the worst. I would have you to teach them also the properties and manner of speakings of the scripture, and how to expound proverbs and similitudes. And then, if they go abroad and walk by the fields and meadows of all manner doctors and philosophers, they could catch no harm: they should discern the poison from the honey, and bring home nothing but that which is wholesome.
But now do ye clean contrary: ye drive them from God’s word, and will let no man come thereto, until he have been two years master of art...
...Finally, that this threatening and forbidding the lay people to read the scripture is not for the love of your souls (which they care for as the fox doth for the geese), is evident, and clearer than the sun; inasmuch as they permit and suffer you to read Robin Hood, and Bevis of Hampton, Hercules, Hector and Troilus, with a thousand histories and fables of love and wantonness, and of ribaldry, as filthy as heart can think, to corrupt the minds of youth withal, clean contrary to the doctrine of Christ and of his apostles: for Paul saith, “See that fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, be not once named among you, as it becometh saints; neither filthiness, neither foolish talking nor jesting, which are not comely: for this ye know, that no whoremonger, either unclean person, or covetous person, which is the worshipper of images, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” And after saith he, “Through such things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of unbelief.” Now seeing they permit you freely to read those things which corrupt your minds and rob you of the kingdom of God and Christ, and bring the wrath of God upon you, how is this forbidding for love of your souls?...” — William Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man