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John Foxe Biography & Facts

John Foxe (1516/1517 – 18 April 1587) was an English clergyman, theologian, and historian, notable for his martyrology Actes and Monuments (otherwise Foxe's Book of Martyrs), telling of Christian martyrs throughout Western history, but particularly the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the 14th century and in the reign of Mary I. The book was widely owned and read by English Puritans and helped to mould British opinion on the Catholic Church for several centuries. Education Foxe was born in Boston, in Lincolnshire, England, of a middlingly prominent family and seems to have been an unusually studious and devout child. In about 1534, when he was about 16, he entered Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was the pupil of John Hawarden (or Harding), a fellow of the college. In 1535 Foxe was admitted to Magdalen College School, where he may either have been improving his Latin or acting as a junior instructor. He became a probationer fellow in July 1538 and a full fellow the following July. Foxe took his bachelor's degree on 17 July 1537, his master's degree in July 1543, and was lecturer in logic in 1539–1540. A series of letters in Foxe's handwriting dated to 1544–45, shows Foxe to be "a man of friendly disposition and warm sympathies, deeply religious, an ardent student, zealous in making acquaintance with scholars." By the time he was twenty-five, he had read the Latin and Greek fathers, the schoolmen, the canon law, and had "acquired no mean skill in the Hebrew language." Resignation from Oxford Foxe resigned from his college in 1545 after becoming a Protestant and thereby subscribing to beliefs condemned by the Church of England under Henry VIII. After a year of "obligatory regency" (public lecturing), Foxe would have been obliged to take holy orders by Michaelmas 1545, and the primary reason for his resignation was probably his opposition to clerical celibacy, which he described in letters to friends as self-castration. Foxe may have been forced from the college in a general purge of its Protestant members although college records state that he resigned of his own accord and "ex honesta causa". Foxe's change of religious opinion may have temporarily broken his relationship with his stepfather and even have put his life in danger. Foxe personally witnessed the burning of William Cowbridge in September 1538.After being forced to abandon what might have been a promising academic career, Foxe experienced a period of dire need. Hugh Latimer invited Foxe to live with him, but Foxe eventually became a tutor in the household of Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near Stratford-on-Avon. Before leaving the Lucys, Foxe married Agnes Randall on 3 February 1547. They had six children. London under Edward VI Foxe's prospects, and those of the Protestant cause generally, improved after the accession of Edward VI in January 1547 and the formation of a Privy Council dominated by pro-reform Protestants. In the middle of, or at the end of 1547 Foxe moved to London and probably lived in Stepney. There he completed three translations of Protestant sermons published by the "stout Protestant" Hugh Singleton. During this period Foxe also found a patron in Mary Fitzroy, Duchess of Richmond, who employed him as tutor to the children of her brother, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, a Roman Catholic who had been executed for treason in January 1547. The children were Thomas, who would become the fourth duke of Norfolk and a valuable friend of Foxe; Jane, later Countess of Westmorland, and Henry, later earl of Northampton. The duchess was the widow of Henry VIII's illegitimate son Henry FitzRoy and in that sense was the sister-in-law of the new king. Foxe lived in the duchess's London household at Mountjoy House and later at Reigate Castle, and her patronage "facilitated Foxe's entry into the ranks of England's Protestant elite." During his stay at Reigate, Foxe helped suppress a cult that had arisen around the shrine of the Virgin Mary at Ouldsworth, which had been credited with miraculous healing powers.Foxe was ordained deacon by Nicholas Ridley on 24 June 1550. His circle of friends, associates, and supporters came to include John Hooper, William Turner, John Rogers, William Cecil, and most importantly John Bale, who was to become a close friend and "certainly encouraged, very probably guided, Foxe in the composition of his first martyrology." From 1548 to 1551, Foxe brought out one tract opposing the death penalty for adultery and another supporting ecclesiastical excommunication of those who he thought "veiled ambition under the cloak of Protestantism." He also worked unsuccessfully to prevent two burnings for religion that occurred during the reign of Edward VI. Marian exile On the accession of Mary I in July 1553, Foxe lost his tutorship when the children's grandfather, the Duke of Norfolk was released from prison. Foxe walked warily as befitted one who had published Protestant books in his own name. As the political climate worsened, Foxe believed himself personally threatened by Bishop Stephen Gardiner. Just ahead of officers sent to arrest him, he sailed with his pregnant wife from Ipswich to Nieuwpoort. He then travelled to Antwerp, Rotterdam, Frankfurt and Strasbourg, which he reached by July 1554. In Strasbourg, Foxe published a Latin history of the Christian persecutions, the draft of which he had brought from England and according to Encyclopedia Britannica, "formed the first outline of the Actes and Monuments." The final publication would then help shape the depiction and legend of Mary I as "Bloody Mary".In the autumn of 1554, Foxe moved to Frankfurt, where he served as a preacher for the English church ministering to refugees in the city. There he was unwillingly drawn into a bitter theological controversy. One faction favoured the church polity and liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, while the other advocated the Reformed models promoted by John Calvin's Genevan church. The latter group, led by John Knox, was supported by Foxe; the former was led by Richard Cox. Eventually Knox, who seems to have acted with more magnanimity, was expelled, and in the autumn of 1555, Foxe and about twenty others also left Frankfurt. Although Foxe clearly favoured Knox, he was irenic by temperament and expressed his disgust at "the violence of the warring factions".Moving to Basel, Foxe worked with his fellow countrymen John Bale and Lawrence Humphrey at the drudgery of proofreading. (Educated Englishmen were noted for their learning, industry and honesty and "would also be the last persons to quarrel with their bread and butter." No knowledge of German or French was required because the English tended to socialise with one another and could communicate with scholars in Latin.) Foxe also completed and had printed a religious drama, Christus Triumphans (1556), in Latin verse. Yet despite receiving occasional financial contributions from English merchants on the continent, F.... Discover the John Foxe popular books. Find the top 100 most popular John Foxe books.

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  • Islam, the Turks and the Making of the English Reformation synopsis, comments

    Islam, the Turks and the Making of the English Reformation

    Christopher Toenjes

    John Foxe wrote the first English history of the Ottoman Empire in his magnum opus, ‘The Acts and Monuments’. He exceeds contemporary representations in his extremely negative imag...

  • John Foxe synopsis, comments

    John Foxe

    David Loades

    First published in 1999, This book  is a wideranging and authoritative review of the reception in England and other countries of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments of the English ...

  • John Foxe and his World synopsis, comments

    John Foxe and his World

    Christopher Highley & John N. King

    Interest in John Foxe and his hugely influential text Acts and Monuments is particularly vibrant at present. This volume, the third to arise from a series of international colloqui...

  • John Foxe and the Elizabethan Church synopsis, comments

    John Foxe and the Elizabethan Church

    V Norskov Olsen

    This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voi...