John Foxe

John Foxe (1516-1587), English Protestant clergyman and author of The Book of Martyrs. He was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, and educated at the University of Oxford. He was a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1539 to 1545 and tutor to the children of the English poet and soldier Henry Howard from 1548 to 1553. With the accession to the English throne of the Roman Catholic Mary I, he left the country, remaining abroad until 1559, after Elizabeth I became queen of England. Foxe was ordained in 1560, and he was made prebendary in Salisbury Cathedral in 1563.

While in exile, Foxe had begun to work on a Latin history of Christian persecutions, Rerum in Ecclesia Gestarum .... Commentarii. He completed this work in 1559, having included in it much material from the Roman Catholic persecutions of the Protestants in England. An English translation, Acts and Monuments of These Latter and Perilous Dayes ..., was published in 1563 and became popularly known as The Book of Martyrs. This work was the source of the popular conception of Roman Catholicism for generations of English people. Its accuracy was attacked and a second edition, corrected by Foxe, was published under the title Ecclesiastical History, Contayning the Actes and Monuments of Things Passed in Every Kynges Tyme. In 1570 the Anglican Convocation ordered this edition to be placed in every collegiate church in England. The work is uncritical and indicates that, at best, Foxe believed every atrocity story he heard. On the other hand, Foxe was far in advance of his time in advocating religious tolerance.