I visited Berkeley Castle a few years ago, the home of my English ancestors.
John Trevisa, an associate of John Wycliffe and one of the translators of Wycliffe’s bible (which pre-dated the King James by more than two centuries) was vicar at Berkeley in the late 1300s. He is later mentioned in the preface to the 1611 King James translation.
The molding that surrounds the Berkeley Castle chapel ceiling has the words of Revelation engraved on it, as Trevisa wrote them. What he did would have been punishable by death, even with the protection of Lord Berkeley.
These men risked their lives making scripture available to the common man. I felt both awe and great respect for them as I looked that the Berkeley ceiling. They deserve honor and gratitude.
They, like Tyndale, got caught up in politics. Wycliffe and his associates were acting in a time of great turmoil. The Black Death had wiped out some many peasants that their labor was at a premium. That set them against nobles and the Church—which was a major landowner in England. If Luther had no come down on the side of the princes during the Peasant Rebellion in Germany, he would have been finished.
Not necessarily. Merely translating the Scriptures didn't get one into trouble -- St. Bede the Venerable did it, for example -- until later on, when it resulted in suspicions of Protestant sympathies. The Church's objection to Wycliffe and (moreso) Tyndale was the editorial comments they included in their translations.