Johne Foxe was born at Boston in Lincolnshire, 1517, in a house at the end of the marketplace. He sprang from the middle class. His father died early and his mother re-married one Richard Melton, who financed John at Oxford, where he took the bachelors degree July 17, 1537. Afterwards, he was elected a fellow of Magdalen Grammar School, where he had studied latin. Such an appointment was rare for an outsider from the school, as was Foxe. His career as lecturer at Magdalen lasted seven years, during which time Foxe had a reputation for being of "friendly disposition and warm sympathies, deeply religious, an ardent student, zealous in making the acquaintance of scholars." He wrote latin plays, jocular verse, and sent drawings to friends. Yet he also continued to develop as a strong Protestant, and this lead to problems.

On June 28, 1539, just after his election to full fellow of Magdalen, the Tudor government brought forth the Act of Six Articles. These articles, nicknamed the "whip and six strings," put even the mildest Protestant in fear of death. Those who would deny transubstantiation were to be burnt as heretics, for example. Foxe was himself especially incensed about the article concerning priestly celibacy. While enforcement was lax, the Articles helped bring moderates back into the conservative confines of the established order. Foxe, however, issued a statement in defense of his positions, and left Magdelan, fearing for his life, and after much poverty and suffering, finally landed a job as tutor to the three eldest children of the duchess of Richmond. This appointment lead to ordination as deacon in 1551, under Bishop Poynet, a strong Protestant. In safe harbour under Poynet, Foxe began to appear in print, beginning with three small works on German reformers. His style grew impassioned as he began attacks on the lax conditions within the episcopacy. When Edward VI died on July 6, 1553, and Mary came to the throne, Foxe had little choice but to leave England for life in exile with other Protestants. Before leaving, however, he defended Protestant interests against Mary's parliamentary attempt to revive and better enforce the Six Articles. Foxe barely escaped to Strasbourg, where he arrived with a pregnant wife after a circuitous journey taking 18 months.

Amongst the Marian exiles in Strasbourg, Foxe became a leader and an activist. In 1553-4 he printed his latin Comentarii, which was a first shadowy draft of his famous opus, Acts and Monuments. Attacks on transubstantiation and other key protestant problems followed, his pen often driven by poverty as well as by zeal. Eventually moving to the Marian community at Frankfurt, where he took the job of church preacher, Foxe became embroiled in the sort of controversy that was to plague dissenting efforts at organization and reform throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Marian exiles, along with other diverse protestant groups, could not agree on the liturgy. Some wanted Calvin's reformed Geneva liturgy, others wanted the English prayer book of Edward's church. The community split. John Knox was exiled from Frankfurt as a result of political infighting, and his entire community left also, going to either Geneva or Basel. Foxe supported the moderate position of Knox, and so went to Basel with his family. There, he wrote several influential tracts, one of which, the Ad Inclytus ac Praepontentes Anglicae Proceres Supplicatio [1557] appealed to the nobility of England to stop Queen Mary from her persecution of Protestants. His work on martyrology continued.

When Mary died on November 17, 1558, hundreds of exiles immediately set forth from the continent homeward to England. Foxe, burdened with a family and little money, was one of the last to return, arriving in October, 1559, after Elizabeth had been on the throne nearly a year. His Book of Martyrs was published by two Basel printers, Oporinus and Brilinger, in 1559. On January 25, 1560, Foxe was ordained a priest of Saint Paul's by his good friend Grindal. These were the salad days for exiles. An urgent need for learned ministers, and fear of Catholics, France, and Spain, forced Elizabeth further into a Protestant position than perhaps she would have gone had her political position been less precarious. Nevertheless, Foxe did not get a good preferrment. This may have been because his own position on vestments was too strident. Consequently, he moved to Norwich for a year, where his wife had family, and there made use of the episcopal registers to complete an enlarged volume of Acts and Monuments, which was published in 1563, making him famous. Henceforth, Foxe was looked on as "one of the foremost champions and benefactors of the Church of England." A second edition of the book was published in 1570, a third in 1576, and a fourth in 1583. Five more editions came forth in the century after Foxe's death on April 18, 1587, and by the end of the seventeenth century, more than ten thousand copies had been set in circulation. Acts and Monuments attained such status that along with the Bible, and the works of Bishop Jewel and Erasmus, it was found chained in many Tudor churches. Foxe became a legend as a holy man, and to the end was called upon to settle issues concerning demonology and the like, though he never attained any high church position.

Foxe's book had many friends and many foes. To its credit, it was the first compilation of the records of those persecuted during Henry VII's and Mary's reigns, and of those thought of as forerunners and heralds of the Lutheran Reformation, such as the followers of Wyclif. The work was conceived in two parts, divided by Luther's decisive act in Wittgenstein in 1517. From the first English editions onward, the book contained several woodcuts in order to interest the unlearned reader, and included prefaces to the Queen of England, to the learned reader [Ad Doctum Lectorem], and further, to "persecutors of God's truth, commonly called papists....," whom he called upon to witness the "pitiful slaughter of your butchery!" Those finding fault with Foxe's work cite the clumsy, unsystematic writings and re-writings. Foxe noted that there were small errors and inconsistencies, but that it was more important to get new material into the book than to perfect the old. More serious charges come from Foxe's general bias, his impassioned rhetoric, his gullibility in believing any tale he heard, and his lack of discrimination between martyrs and common criminals. Robert Kibler

Foxe to Queen Mary and her Council:

To burn up with fiery flame, blazing with pitch and

sulphur the living bodies of wretched men who err through

blindness of judgement rather than deliberate will, is a hard thing, and belongs more to the example of Rome than

to the spirit of the gospel.....

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Bibliography:

Mozley, J.F. John Foxe and His Book NY: Macmillan, 1940

Haller, William. The Elect Nation: The Meaning and Relevance

of Foxe's Book of Martyrs. NY: Harper and Row, 1963

Lamont, William M. Godly Rule: Politics and Religion. NY: St

Martins, 1969