 JOHN
FOXE, the author of the famous Book of Martyrs, was born at Boston,
in Lincolnshire, in 1516. At the age of sixteen he is said to have
entered Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was the pupil of John
Harding or Hawarden, and had for room-mate Alexander Nowell,
afterwards dean of St. Paul's. His authenticated connexion at the
university is, however, with Magdalen College. He took his B.A.
degree in 1 537 and his M.A. in 1543. He was lecturer on logic in
1540-1541. He wrote several Latin plays on Scriptural subjects, of
which the best, De Christo triumphante, was repeatedly printed,
(London, 1551; Basel, 1556, &c.), and was translated into English by
Richard Day, son of the printer.
He became a fellow of Magdalen College in 1539, resigning in 1545.
It is said that he refused to conform to the rules for regular
attendance at chapel, and that he protested both against the
enforced celibacy of fellows and the obligation to take holy orders
within seven years of their election. The customary statement that
he was expelled from his fellowship is based on the untrustworthy
biography attributed to his son Samuel Foxe, but the college records
state that he resigned of his own accord and ex honesta causa. The
letter in which he protests to President Oglethorpe against the
charges of irreverence, &c., brought against him is printed in
Pratt's edition (vol. i. Appendix, pp. 58-61).
On leaving Oxford he acted as tutor for a short time in the house of
the Lucys of Charlecote, near Stratford-on-Avon, where he married
Agnes Randall. Late in 1547 or early in the next year he went to
London. He found a patron in Mary Fitzroy, Duchess of Richmond, and
having been ordained deacon by Ridley in 1550, he settled at Reigate
Castle, where he acted as tutor to the duchess's nephews, the orphan
children of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. On the accession of Queen
Mary, Foxe was deprived of his tutorship by the boys' grandfather,
the Duke of Norfolk, who was now released from prison.
He retired to Strassburg, and occupied himself with a Latin history
of the Christian persecutions which he had begun at the suggestion
of Lady Jane Grey. He had assistance from two clerics of widely
differing opinions — from Edmund Grindal, who was later, as
Archbishop of Canterbury, to maintain his Puritan convictions in
opposition to Elizabeth; and from John Aylmer, afterwards one of the
bitterest opponents of the Puritan party. This book, dealing chiefly
with Wycliffe and Huss, and coming down to 1500, formed the first
outline of the Actes and Monuments. It was printed by Wendelin
Richelius with the title of Commentarii rerum in ecclesia gestarum
(Strasburg, 1554). In the year of its publication Foxe removed to
Frankfort, where he found the English colony of Protestant refugees
divided into two camps. He made a vain attempt to frame a compromise
which should be accepted by the extreme Calvinists and by the
partisans of the Anglican doctrine.
He removed (1555) to Basel, where he worked as printer's reader to
Johann Herbst or Oporinus. He made steady progress with his great
book as he received reports from England of the religious
persecutions there, and he issued from the press of Oporinus his
pamphlet Ad inclytos ac praepotentes Angliae proceres ...
supplicatio (1557), a plea for toleration addressed to the English
nobility. In 1559 he completed the Latin edition' of his martyrology
and returned to England. He lived for some time at Aldgate, London,
in the house of his former pupil, Thomas Howard, now duke of
Norfolk, who retained a sincere regard for his tutor and left him a
small pension in his will. He became associated with John Day the
printer, himself once a Protestant exile. Foxe was ordained priest
by Edmund Grindal, bishop of London, in 1560, and besides much
literary work he occasionally preached at Paul's Cross and other
places. His work had rendered great service to the government, and
he might have had high preferment in the Church but for the Puritan
views which he consistently maintained. He held, however, the
prebend of Shipton in Salisbury cathedral, and is said to have been
for a short time rector of Cripplegate.
In 1563 was issued from the press of John Day the first English
edition of the Actes and Monuments of these latter and perillous
Dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and
described the great Persecution and horrible Troubles that have been
wrought and practised by the Romishe Prelates, speciallye in this
Realme of England and Scotland, from the yeare of our Lorde a
thousande to the time now present. Gathered and collected according
to the true Copies and Wrytinges certificatorie as well of the
Parties themselves that Suffered, as also out of the Bishop's
Registers, which were the Doers thereof, by John Foxe, commonly
known as the Book of Martyrs. Several gross errors which had
appeared in the Latin version, and had been since exposed, were
corrected in this edition.
Its popularity was immense and signal. The Marian persecution was
still fresh in men's minds, and the graphic narrative intensified in
its numerous readers the fierce hatred of Spain and of the
Inquisition which was one of the master passions of the reign. Nor
was its influence transient. For generations the popular conception
of Roman Catholicism was derived from its bitter pages. Its accuracy
was immediately attacked by Catholic writers, notably in the Dialogi
sex (1566), nominally from the pen of Alan Cope, but in reality by
Nicholas Harpsfield, and by Robert Parsons in Three Conversions of
England (1570).
These criticisms induced Foxe to produce a second corrected edition,
Ecclesiastical History, contayning the Actes and Monuments of things
passed in every kynges tyme... in 1570, a copy of which was ordered
by Convocation to be placed in every collegiate church. Foxe based
his accounts of the martyrs partly on authentic documents and
reports of the trials, and on statements received direct from the
friends of the sufferers, but he was too hasty a worker and too
violent a partisan to produce anything like a correct or impartial
account of the mass of facts with which he had to deal. Anthony a
Wood says that Foxe "believed and reported all that was told him,
and there is every reason to suppose that he was purposely misled,
and continually deceived by those whose interest it was to bring
discredit on his work," but he admits that the book is a monument of
his industry, his laborious research and his sincere piety.
The gross blunders due to carelessness have often been exposed, and
there is no doubt that Foxe was only too ready to believe evil of
the Catholics, and he cannot always be exonerated from the charge of
wilful falsification of evidence. It should, however, be remembered
in his honour that his advocacy of religious toleration was far in
advance of his day. He pleaded for the despised Dutch Anabaptists,
and remonstrated with John Knox on the rancour of his First Blast of
the Trumpet. Foxe was one of the earliest students of Anglo-Saxon,
and he and Day published an edition of the Saxon gospels under the
patronage of Archbishop Parker. He died on the 18th of April 1587
and was buried at St Giles's, Cripplegate.
Excerpted from:
Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Ed. Vol X.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910. 771. |
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