The martyrologist, born at Boston in Lincolnshire, at sixteen entered Brasenose College, Oxford, and was fellow of Magdalen 1538–45. When tutor with Lucy of Charlecote he married (1547), and afterwards was tutor to the son of the Earl of Surrey, executed in 1547. During the reign of Mary he retired to the Continent, where he met Knox, Grindal, and Whittingham. On Elizabeth’s accession he was pensioned by his old pupil, now Duke of Norfolk, and received a prebend of Salisbury (1563). He lived chiefly in London, and often preached. For a year he held a stall at Durham, but was debarred from further preferment by objection to the surplice. Foxe published numerous controversial treatises and sermons, besides an apocalyptic Latin mystery play, called “Christus Triumphans” (1556). But the work that has immortalised his name is his “History of the Acts and Monuments of the Church,” popularly known as “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs,” the first part of which was published in Latin at Strasburg in 1554 (reprinted at Basel in 1559). The first English edition appeared in 1563, in folio. Sanctioned by the bishops, it went through four editions in Foxe’s lifetime. It is a noble monument of English; and Foxe’s story is doubtless substantially true, although disfigured by credulity and bitter prejudice. The biography of Foxe, attributed to his son Samuel, and published in the 1641 edition of the “Acts,” is apocryphal. The best edition of Foxe is that in the “Reformation” series, edited by Mendham and Pratt (8 vols. 1853 et seq.).

Acts and Monuments of the Church

  That worthie Booke of Martyrs, made by that famous Father and excellent Instrument in God his Church, Maister John Fox, so little to be accepted, and all other good books little or nothing to be reverenced; whilst other toyes, fantasies, and bableries, whereof the world is ful, are suffered to be printed.

  The story is sufficiently known of the two Servants, whereof the one told his Master, “he would do every thing;” the other (which was even Esop himself) said, “he could do nothing;” rendering this reason, “because his former fellow servant would leave him nothing to do.” But in good earnest, as to the particular subject of our English Martyrs, Mr. Fox “hath done every thing” (leaving posterity nothing to work upon); and to those who say “he hath overdone something,” we have returned our answer before.

  Having compared his “Acts and Monuments” with the records, I have never been able to discover any errors or prevarications in them, but the utmost fidelity and exactness.

  While he was here employed by Oporinus, at spare hours he began his “History of the Acts of the Church,” in Latin: which he drew out more briefly at first; and, before his return home into England, well near finished. Having here completed the copy, which was but the first part of what he intended, but making a just volume in folio, he sent this work to Basil to be printed: and so it was in the year 155–(9). It remained many years after in those parts in great request, and was read by foreign nations; although hardly known at all by our own. Being now in peace and safety at home, Foxe reviewed this his work, and, in the year 1566, first published it in English very voluminous, because of those many relations of the persecutions in queen Mary’s days, that came to his hands. All this work he did himself, without the help of any amanuensis, nor had he any servant to do his necessary domestic business; being fain to be often diverted by his own private occasions from his work. He afterwards enlarged these his labours into three large volumes, which have since undergone many editions.

  These writings have not proved, and it never will be proved, that John Foxe is not one of the most faithful and authentic of all historians. We know too much of the strength of Foxe’s book, and of the weakness of those of his adversaries, to be further moved by such censures than to charge them with falsehood. All the many researches and discoveries of later times, in regard to historical documents, have only contributed to place the general fidelity and truth of Foxe’s melancholy narrative, on a rock which cannot be shaken.

  “The Acts and Monuments of the Martyrs” have long been, they still remain, and will always continue, substantial pillars of the Protestant Church; of more force than many volumes of bare arguments, to withstand the tide of popery; and, like a Pharos, should be lighted up in every age, as a warning to all posterity.

  His “Book of Martyrs”—as it is called—was, and yet is, one of the most extraordinary and popular church histories in the world. The private history of this elaborate work might be worth knowing, but it is hopeless to enquire after it:—who were the author’s chief authorities, and what artists he obtained to make the designs and engravings, are now, I believe, points upon which no correct information is likely to be obtained. Fox lived to see four editions of his labours, himself dying in 1587. These editions were succeeded by five more, of which the latest was published almost within a century after the death of the author. The first edition, in 1563, is of very rare occurrence in a perfect state; and has also some particulars which are omitted in the subsequent editions…. Fox was a sort of Luther in his way. His style is equally bold, and his enmity to the church of Rome equally bitter, with that of the great German reformer. His “Acts” are, indeed, an invaluable historical repertory: but, in some particulars, he seems to have gathered information too hastily, and to have detailed it too loosely.

  John Foxe, the author upon whose printed words so many persons rely for their history of this complex period, is not to be depended on for his fiery and lurid descriptions, which are uniformly either false, romance-like, misleading, or greatly exaggerated.

  To a right student the value of such a book is rather increased than lessened by the inevitable bias of a writer who recorded incidents that had for him a deep, real, present interest, and who had his own part in the passion of the controversy he describes. The work is wonderfully rich in authentic papers, many of which would have been lost if Foxe had not preserved them. It vividly represents one aspect of the strong life of the sixteenth century…. Though written in the temper of a partisan, the book has withstood every attack upon its honesty. Foxe gave true transcripts of the documents on which he built his case; he referred honestly to records he had seen and used, when all the secrets of the prison houses were open to him. If we divest the book of its accidental character of feud between the churches, it yet stands, in the first years of Elizabeth’s reign, a monument that marks the growing strength of the demand for spiritual freedom, defiance of those powers of the flesh that seek to stifle conscience and fetter thought. The day, however, was not come when they who claim such freedom grant it fully to their adversaries.

  When we recollect that until the appearance of the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” in the next century, the common people had almost no reading matter except the Bible and Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs,” we can understand the deep impression that this book produced, and how it served to mold the national character. Those who could read found there the full details of all atrocities committed on the Protestant Reformers: the illiterate could see the rude illustrations of the various instruments of torture, the rack, the gridiron, the boiling oil, and then the holy martyrs breathing out their souls amid the flames. Take now a people just awakening to a new intellectual and religious life; let several generations of them, from childhood to old age, pore over such a book as this, and its stories become traditions, as indelible and almost as potent as songs and customs on a nation’s life. All the fiendish acts there narrated were the work of the Church of Rome, for no hint was given of any other side to the story. No wonder that among the masses, aside from any religious sentiment or conviction, there grew up a horror and detestation of the pope and the Romish Church which have not entirely lost their force after three centuries of Protestant domination.

  After the Bible itself, no work so profoundly influenced early Protestant sentiment in England as the “Book of Martyrs.” Even in our own time it is still a living force: some of its descriptions are burned into the memories of us all, and its spirit is perpetuated in the “Pilgrim’s Progress” and in other religious classics, as well as in the tradition of countless houesholds…. The book is far more than a bare record of persecution. It is an arsenal of controversy, and a storehouse of romance, as well as a source of edification. Protestantism is traced to its origins in England, Bohemia, and Germany, and the corruptions which had crept into the Church of Rome are exposed at enormous length and with unsparing denunciation. The same method is continued in treating of the English Reformation, and Foxe thus avoids an error which makes so many Lives of the Saints mere catalogues of painful perfections. He plunges, indeed, into the opposite extreme. He accumulates details like Defoe; he is as garrulous as Dogberry. All is grist that comes to his mill. Citations, rejoinders, lengthy dialogues, eye-witnesses’ narratives, judgments and sentences—whole piles of documents (with pithy commentaries on each) are heaped one upon the other till we almost hear the parchments crackling.

  The “Book of Martyrs” is the common property of all Protestants, and it would be an absurd pretension to claim it exclusively for the Puritans. At the same time it seems to belong in an especial manner to that party, and they perhaps valued it the most highly. By its authorship they certainly had the prior claim, and during the persecutions of Elizabeth they might compare their own sufferings with those of their heroic predecessors, and this the more fortunate Anglicans, safe within the pale of their Church, could hardly do.

  Foxe’s “Acts and Monuments” (John Daye, 1562–63), first edition, complete. Earl of Ashburnham (1897), £150.