Foxe, JOHN, the martyrologist, was born of respectable parents in 1516, at Boston, in Lincolnshire. At sixteen a fellow of Brasenose College brought him to Oxford, apparently as a private pupil. He seems to have attended Magdalen College School, and to have become an undergraduate of Magdalen College. He took his bachelor's degree in 1537, his master's in 1543, and was elected a fellow of Magdalen in 1538. He had already acquired a reputation by his Latin verses, but soon gave himself to the study of the Fathers, and of the theology of the Reformers, with the result that he found his position among less advanced colleagues at Magdalen irksome, and voluntarily resigned his fellowship in 1545. For some time he was employed as tutor to the children of William Lucy of Charlecote, Warwickshire; there he married early in 1547, and afterwards was engaged by the Duchess of Richmond as tutor to the children of her brother, the Earl of Surrey, who had been executed, 19th January 1547. During the reign of Mary, for safety's sake he retired to the Continent, and at Strasburg, Frankfort, or Basel met all the leading Reformers, including Knox, Grindal, and Whittingham. At Basel he was employed as reader for the press in the printing-office of Oporinus. He returned on the accession of Elizabeth, was pensioned by his old pupil, now Duke of Norfolk, and received, in May 1563, a prebend in the cathedral of Salisbury. He lived chiefly in Cripplegate, London, and often preached. For a year he held a stall at Durham. But he was prevented from further preferment by his conscientious objection to wearing the surplice and other practices of the establishment. To his credit it must be said that he pleaded for religious toleration when some Dutch Anabaptists were condemned to the flames in London in 1575. He interceded for them with Queen Elizabeth and other persons in authority, but without effect. He died in 1587, and was buried in London, in the chancel of St Giles's, Cripplegate. Foxe published numerous controversial treatises and sermons, besides an apocalyptic Latin mystery play, called Christus Triumphans (Basel, 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, in an octavo volume, at Strasburg in 1554, reprinted along with five other books at Basel in a folio volume in 1559. The first English edition appeared in 1563, in one volume folio. Sanctioned by the bishops, it was ordered by a canon of the Anglican Convocation meeting in 1571 to be placed in the hall of every episcopal palace in England; and it went through four editions in Foxe's lifetime, and numerous others since his death. Apart altogether from the vexed question of its historical value, it will survive as a noble monument of English. Foxe's statements cannot be accepted as trustworthy evidence, if unsupported from other sources. His story is doubtless substantially true, although his credulity and bitter prejudice hardly suggest critical capacity in the selection of his authorities.
He was warmly commended by Strype (who came into possession of Foxe's MSS.), Whitgift, Camden, Burnet, and Thomas Fuller. Apart from
Roman Catholic critics, many of whose attacks are justifiable, Foxe's exaggerations and want of historical precision have been best exposed by the Rev. Dr S. R. Maitland, in a series of pamphlets issued between 1837 and 1842. The biography of Foxe, attributed to his son Samuel, and published in both Latin and English in the 1641 edition of the Acts, is certainly apocryphal, although it has formed the basis of numerous popular memoirs.
The best edition is that in the 'Reformation' series of the Ecclesiastical Historians of England, edited by R. R. Mendham and Josiah Pratt (8 vols. 1853 et seq.), with Canon Townsend's vindication against the attacks of Romanists.