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Volume 14

 

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THE ACTS AND MONUMENTS OF THE  
CHRISTIAN CHURCH  
by  
JOHN FOXE  
Commonly known as  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Volume 14  
Addenda.  
Published by the Ex-classics Project, 2010  
http://www.exclassics.com  
Public Domain  
VOLUME 14  
CONTENTS  
Full Contents  
List of Illustrations  
Glossary  
3
17  
24  
82  
Life Of John Fox from The Dictionary of National Biography  
The Life and Martyrdom of Dermot O'Hurley, Archbishop Of Cashel by Philip  
O'Sullivan  
96  
The Execution Of Servetus For Blasphemy, Heresy, & Obstinate Anabaptism,  
Defended by John Knox.  
99  
Observations On Foxe's Book Of Martyrs by William Cobbett  
106  
-2-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Full Contents  
VOLUME 1  
From the Death of Jesus Christ to Frederic Barbarossa  
Introduction to the Ex-Classics Edition  
Bibliographic Note  
Editor's Introduction.  
5
8
9
THE FIRST BOOK  
THE ACTS AND MONUMENTS, CONTAINING THE THREE HUNDRED  
YEARS NEXT AFTER CHRIST, WITH THE TEN PERSECUTIONS OF THE  
PRIMITIVE CHURCH.  
1
2
3
4
7
8
9
1
1
1
1
1
1
. Foreword  
30  
36  
42  
46  
92  
105  
108  
129  
150  
175  
198  
204  
206  
. The Early Persecution of the Apostles  
. The First Persecution under Nero  
. The Second Persecution under Domitian  
. The Fifth Persecution under Severus  
. The Sixth Persecution under Maximinus  
. The Seventh Persecution under Decius  
0. The Eighth Persecution under Valerian  
1. The Tenth Persecution under Dioclesian  
2. The Persecution under Licinius  
3. Persecutions in Persia  
5. Persecution under Julian the Apostate  
6. Constantine the Great  
THE SECOND BOOK  
CONTAINING THE NEXT THREE HUNDRED YEARS FOLLOWING  
WITH SUCH THINGS SPECIALLY TOUCHED AS HAVE HAPPENED IN  
ENGLAND FROM THE TIME OF KING LUCIUS TO GREGORIUS, AND  
SO AFTER TO THE TIME OF KING EGBERT.  
1
1
1
2
2
7. The Church in Britain before the Coming of the Saxons  
8. The Entering and Reigning of the Saxons in the Realm of England.  
9. The Coming of Austin  
0. The Conversion of the Saxons  
1. From the Conversion of the Saxons to the Coming of the Danes  
218  
224  
226  
236  
248  
THE THIRD BOOK.  
FROM THE REIGN OF KING EGBERTUS UNTO THE TIME OF WILLIAM  
CONQUEROR.  
-3-  
VOLUME 14  
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
3
3
2. The Coming of the Danes  
3. Alfred the Great  
3. King Edward the Elder  
4. King Ethelstan  
5. King Edmund  
6. King Edgar  
270  
280  
290  
293  
298  
303  
315  
319  
324  
330  
336  
7. King Edward the Martyr  
8. King Egelred or Ethelred, "The Unready"  
9. Kings Edmund Ironside, Canute and Hardeknout  
0. King Edward the Confessor  
1. King Harold  
THE FOURTH BOOK  
CONTAINING ANOTHER THREE HUNDRED YEARS, FROM WILLIAM  
THE CONQUEROR TO THE TIME OF JOHN WICKLIFFE, WHEREIN IS  
DESCRIBED THE PROUD AND MISORDERED REIGN OF ANTICHRIST  
BEGINNING TO STIR IN THE CHURCH OF CHRIST.  
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
2. William the Conqueror  
3. Hildebrand (Pope Gregory the Seventh)  
4. Summary of the Reign and Character of William I.  
5. William Rufus  
6. Henry I.  
7. King Stephen  
8. Henry II  
9. Quarrel between the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and the Papacy  
339  
347  
364  
367  
381  
403  
408  
409  
VOLUME 2  
From Thomas À Becket to King Edward III  
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
5
5
5
5
5
0. Life and Death of Thomas À Becket  
1. After the Death of Thomas À Becket  
2. Pope Alexander III and the Waldenses  
3. Other Events During the Reign of King Henry II.  
4. Person and Character of Henry II.  
5. Richard I. Massacre of Jews at the Coronation. Riot in York Cathedral  
6. Dispute between the Archbishop and Abbot of Canterbury  
7. Richard I. (Contd.) The Crusade  
5
34  
41  
51  
56  
58  
62  
77  
92  
114  
134  
145  
169  
177  
180  
8. King John  
9. King Henry III.  
0. The Crusade against the Albigensians.  
1. Henry III (Contd.)  
2. The Schism between the Roman and Greek Churches  
3. More Dissensions about Ecclesiastical Appointments  
4. Papal Greed and Corruption  
-4-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
5
5
5
5
5
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
7
7
7
5. The Third Crusade  
6. The Emperor Frederick II.  
198  
209  
213  
218  
251  
257  
272  
283  
285  
289  
310  
319  
325  
329  
343  
366  
383  
386  
7. The Right of Princes to Appoint Bishops  
8. The Emperor Frederick II. (Contd.)  
9. Frederic's Last Campaign and Death. Summary of his Character  
0. Gulielmus and Other Champions of Christ  
1. Robert Grosthead  
2. The Wickedness of the Jews  
3. Other Events in the Reign of Henry III  
4. Quarrel of King Henry III and the Nobles  
5. Prince Edward's Crusade  
6. King Edward I.  
7. Quarrel of King Philip of France and the Pope  
8. King Edward I (Contd).  
9. King Edward II.  
0. King Edward III – Wars with the French and Scots  
1. King Edward III — Matters Ecclesiastical  
2. Anti-Papal Writers: 1300-1360  
VOLUME 3  
From King Edward III to King Henry V.  
THE FIFTH BOOK  
CONTAINING THE LAST THREE HUNDRED YEARS FROM THE  
LOOSING OUT OF SATAN.  
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
9
9
3. The Persecutions Foretold in the Scriptures  
4. The Prayer and Complaint of the Ploughman.  
5. The Parable of Friar Rupescissanus  
6. Armachanus and The Begging Friars  
7. Pope Gregory the Eleventh and King Edward the Third  
8. Anti-Papal Writers, 1370-1390  
9. John Wickliff  
0. Herford, Reppington and Ashton  
1. John Wickliff (Contd.)  
2. William Swinderby.  
5
9
33  
35  
44  
47  
52  
83  
103  
118  
136  
199  
204  
224  
229  
238  
244  
249  
260  
3. Walter Brute.  
4. A Letter from Lucifer to the Pope and Prelates  
5. King Richard II and the Followers of Wickliff  
6. The Deposing of King Richard II.  
7. William Sautre  
8. Opposition to Henry IV.  
9. John Badby  
0. Laws Made against Heretics  
1. William Thorpe.  
-5-  
VOLUME 14  
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
2. John Purvey.  
3. Continuing Schism.  
301  
309  
311  
313  
319  
323  
325  
354  
4. John Huss Condemned by Pope Alxander V.  
5. Insufferable Pride and Vainglory of The Prelates  
6. Notes of Certain Parliament Matters Passed in King Henry V's Days.  
7. Coronation of Henry V. Synod of London  
8. The Trouble and Persecution of the Lord Cobham.  
9. Cope's Book of Lord Cobham, Answered  
VOLUME 4  
From John Huss to the Death of Pope Julius II  
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
00. The Entry of the Story of the Bohemians.  
01. The Council of Constance.  
02. John Huss before the Council of Constance  
03. The Trial of John Huss  
04. The Articles against John Huss, and his Answers.  
05. The Trial of John Huss (Continued)  
06. Certain Letters relating to the Case of John Huss  
07. Jerome of Prague.  
08. The Letter of the Lords of Bohemia to the Council  
09. John Claydon and Others  
4
15  
24  
50  
60  
85  
101  
116  
131  
135  
148  
10. The Bohemians Resist the Pope  
THE SIXTH BOOK  
PERTAINING TO THE LAST THREE HUNDRED YEARS FROM THE  
LOOSING OUT OF SATAN.  
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
11. A Preface to the Reader.  
12. Further Persecutions of Wicliff's Followers  
13. The Council of Basil  
14. The Election of Pope Felix V.  
15. The Bohemians and the Council of Basil  
16. Events in England 1431-1450  
17. The Invention and Benefit of Printing.  
18. The Lamentable Losing of Constantinople.  
19. Reynold Pecocke  
20. The Papacy, 1449-1492  
21. The Wars of the Roses  
22. On False Prophecies  
23. Turmoil in the Empire  
179  
180  
207  
256  
266  
286  
302  
305  
308  
312  
316  
332  
337  
24. John the Neatherd of Franconia, a Martyr, and Doctor Johannes De Wesalia.350  
25. The Wars of the Roses (Concluded)  
26 The Word of God Spread by Printing  
27. Jerome Savanarola  
356  
366  
370  
-6-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
28. Discontent in Germany  
1
373  
VOLUME 5  
The Reformation in Europe  
THE SEVENTH BOOK OF THE ACTS AND MONUMENTS  
1
29. History of the Turks.  
6
1
1
1
1
1
30. Solyman, the Twelfth Emperor of The Turks.  
31. The Siege of Vienna  
32. Further Campaigns of Solyman  
33. Recent Defeats Of The Turks  
34. A Notice touching the miserable Persecution, Slaughter, and Captivity of the  
Christians under the Turks.  
35. Persecution in England, 1500-1509  
36. The Proud Primacy of Popes  
37. Martin Luther — Introduction  
38. Martin Luther  
39. The Diet of Worms.  
40. Assembly at Nuremberg  
41. Luther after the Diet of Worms; His Teachings and Death.  
42. Cardinal Campeius' Mission  
43. The Reformation in Switzerland.  
44. Henry Voes and John Esch  
45. Henry Sutphen, Monk, a Martyr, at Dithmarsch.  
46. The Lamentable Martyrdom of John Clerk, of Melden, In France.  
47. John Castellane.  
48. Martyrs in Germany.  
49. Martyrs in France – I.  
50. Martyrs in France – II.  
51. Martyrs in Spain  
35  
38  
46  
59  
63  
77  
91  
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
118  
128  
149  
164  
180  
189  
192  
218  
220  
229  
230  
234  
260  
290  
327  
340  
359  
391  
442  
52. Martyrs in Italy  
53. The Waldensian Martyrs in Provence  
54. The Waldensians of Piedmont  
55. Pope Leo's Bull against Luther, and Luther's Answer  
VOLUME 6  
The Reign Of King Henry VIII – Part I.  
56. Introduction to the Reign of Henry VIII.  
57. Dispute about the Immaculate Conception.  
58. Londoners Forced to Recant, 1510-1527  
59. William Smeeting and John Brewster.  
60. Richard Hun  
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
5
7
13  
21  
24  
41  
51  
61. London Martyrs, 1509-1518  
62. Persecution in Lincoln  
-7-  
VOLUME 14  
1
63. Scholars and Poets  
61  
THE EIGHTH BOOK  
PERTAINING TO THE LAST THREE HUNDRED YEARS FROM THE  
LOOSING OUT OF SATAN. CONTINUING THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH  
MATTERS APPERTAINING TO BOTH STATES, AS WELL  
ECCLESIASTICAL, AS CIVIL AND TEMPORAL.  
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
64. The History of Seven Godly Martyrs Burnt at Coventry.  
65. Patrick Hamilton  
66. Master Patrick's Places  
67 Martyrs in Scotland and England, 1525-32.  
68. Thomas Wolsey  
69. The Sack of Rome  
70. Thomas Wolsey (Contd.)  
71. Mummuth and Hitten  
72. Thomas Bilney  
73. Books Banned by the Papists.  
74. Richard Bayfield, Martyr.  
75. John Tewkesbury, Leatherseller, of London, Martyr.  
76. John Randall and Edward Freese.  
77. James Bainham, Lawyer, and Martyr.  
78. John Bent and Others.  
79. John Frith and Andrew Hewet.  
80. Thomas Benet  
81. Persons Abjured in London  
82. King Henry's Breach with Rome  
83. Papal Documents Relating To King Henry's Divorce.  
84. Arguments against the Pope's Supremacy  
85. Fools and Traitors who Clung to the Pope  
86 William Tyndale  
66  
69  
74  
93  
102  
107  
110  
127  
130  
167  
174  
183  
191  
194  
203  
205  
216  
224  
248  
269  
272  
290  
299  
87. The Death of the Lady Katharine, Princess Dowager, and that of Queen Anne.  
3
19  
1
1
1
1
1
1
88. King Henry Refuses the Pope's Summons to Mantua  
89. Rebellions in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire  
9. Edmund Bonner  
91. Ecclesiastical Matters, A.D. 1538.  
92. Friar Forrest.  
322  
328  
333  
349  
354  
355  
93. John Lambert  
VOLUME 7  
The Reign Of Henry VIII – Part II.  
1
1
1
94. Other Martyrs, 1538  
95. King Henry's Decree Against Imported Books  
96. The Variable Changes and Mutations of Religion in King Henry's Days.  
5
10  
13  
-8-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
2
97. Thomas Cromwell  
98. The English Bible.  
99. The History of Robert Barnes, Thomas Garret, and William Jerome, Divines.131  
00. Papists, Executed the same time with Barnes, Jerome, and Garret.  
01. Further Persection Arising from the Six Articles.  
02. John Porter, Thomas Sommers, and Others  
03. False Alarm at Oxford  
82  
126  
157  
159  
174  
179  
04. The King Divorced from the Lady Anne of Cleves, and Married to the Lady  
Katharine Howard, his Fifth Wife.  
05. Four Windsor Martyrs  
06. Persecution in Calais.  
185  
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
187  
218  
240  
242  
245  
250  
254  
270  
273  
274  
282  
286  
329  
347  
349  
352  
365  
371  
374  
378  
07. Dr. London and the Goldsmith.  
08. Qualifications of the Act of the Six Articles.  
09 John Athy, John Heywood, Kerby, ad Roger Clarke  
10 King Henry's Acts and Proclamations, 1545-46  
11. Anne Askew  
12. John Lacels, John Adams, And Nicholas Belenian.  
13. One Rogers, a Martyr, Burned in Norfolk.  
14. Katherine Parr  
15. Wicked Deeds Of Bishop Gardiner  
16. Suppression of Books; Tyndale's Condemned.  
17. Sir John Borthwike  
18. Thomas Forret And His Followers  
19. Martyrs in St. John's-Town, or Perth  
20. George Wisehart  
21. Adam Wallace  
22. The Schism that Arose in Scotland for the Pater-Noster  
23.Walter Mille.  
24. Persecution in Kent.  
25. Three Divers sorts of Judgments amongst the Papists, against Heretics as they  
Call Them.  
26. The Death of King Henry the Eighth  
384  
387  
2
VOLUME 8  
The Reign Of King Edward VI.  
THE NINTH BOOK  
CONTAINING THE ACTS AND THINGS DONE IN THE REIGN OF KING  
EDWARD THE SIXTH.  
2
2
2
2
2
26. Character of Edward VI.  
5
12  
27  
37  
50  
27. Religious Reforms under King Edward  
28. The Book of Common Prayer  
29. Papist Rebellions  
30. Trial and Imprisonment of Edmund Bonner.  
-9-  
VOLUME 14  
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
31. Further Religious Reforms under King Edward  
32. The Trial Of Stephen Gardiner.  
33. Doctor Redman Expounds the True Faith on his Deathbed  
34. William Gardiner, Martyred on Portugal  
35. The Downfall of Edward, Duke of Somerset  
37. A Like Disputation in Cambridge  
38. A Fruitful Dialogue Declaring these Words of Christ, This Is My Body.  
39. The End and Death of King Edward the Sixth.  
103  
108  
219  
229  
238  
265  
304  
320  
VOLUME 9  
The Reign Of Queen Mary I. – Part I.  
THE TENTH BOOK.  
THE BEGINNING OF THE REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.  
40. The Abominable Blasphemy of the Mass.  
41. The Beginning of The Reign of Queen Mary  
42. Prohibition of Unauthorised Preaching.  
43. A Disputation On Religion Ordered By The Queen.  
44. Deposed Bishops Re-appointed, and Appointed Bishops Deposed.  
45. Wyat's Rebellion  
46. Lady Jane Grey.  
47. Actions to Re-Establish Papism.  
48. Dr. Ridley Disputes On The Scarament.  
49. Ridley, Cranmer and Latimer at Oxford.  
50. Disputation of Cranmer at Oxford  
51. Disputation of Ridley at Oxford  
52. Disputation of Latimer at Oxford  
53. Disputation of Harpsfield at Oxford  
54. Concerning these Disputations  
55. Various Documents Relating to the Disputations  
56. Other Things which Happened in this Realm, in this Tumultuous Time.  
57. The Execution of The Kentish Rebels.  
58. Disputation of Bradford and Saunders at Cambridge.  
59. Princess Elizabeth Imprisoned.  
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
6
33  
40  
46  
67  
69  
73  
86  
96  
102  
108  
142  
187  
202  
214  
229  
235  
244  
252  
257  
60. Marriage of Queen Mary and Philip of Spain. Actions to Re-Establish Papism  
2
58  
2
2
2
61. John Bolton  
62. The Queen with Child  
63. The Bow Congregation  
281  
283  
288  
THE ELEVENTH BOOK.  
WHEREIN IS DISCOURSED THE BLOODY MURDERING OF GOD'S  
SAINTS, WITH THE PARTICULAR PROCESSES AND NAMES OF SUCH  
-10-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
GOOD MARTYRS, BOTH MEN AND WOMEN, AS, IN THIS TIME OF  
QUEEN MARY, WERE PUT TO DEATH.  
2
2
2
2
64. John Rogers.  
65. Laurence Saunders.  
66. John Hooper  
296  
322  
349  
391  
67. Rowland Taylor.  
VOLUME 10  
The Reign of Queen Mary I. – Part II.  
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
68. Other Events of February 1555.  
69. Correspondence between Queen Mary and the King of Denmark.  
70. Bishop Bonner Commands Universal Reconciliation.  
71. James Hales  
72. Thomas Tomkins.  
73. William Hunter.  
74. Thomas Causton and Thomas Higbed.  
75. William Pygot, Stephen Knight, and John Laurence  
76. Robert Ferrar  
77. Rawlins White  
78. Other Events of March and April 1555.  
79. George Marsh  
80. William Flower  
81. Other Events of May 1555.  
82. John Cardmaker and John Warne.  
83. Other Events of June, 1555.  
84. John Ardeley and John Simson.  
85. John Tooley  
5
7
9
12  
19  
24  
34  
44  
49  
61  
68  
74  
109  
119  
120  
130  
131  
136  
139  
172  
86. Thomas Haukes.  
87. Thomas Wats.  
88. Concerning the Childbed of Queen Mary, as it Was Rumoured among the  
People.  
89. Protestant Books Condemned By The Council  
90. Some Papistical Blasphemies.  
91. Thomas Osmond, William Bamford, Thomas Osborne, and Others.  
92. John Bradford.  
93. John Leaf, Burnt with Bradford.  
94. The Execution of Bradford and Leaf.  
95. The Letters of Master Bradford.  
96 William Minge and James Trevisam  
97. John Bland.  
98. Nicholas Sheterden, John Frankesh, and Humfrey Middleton.  
99. Nicholas Hall and Christopher Wade.  
00. Dirick Carver and John Launder  
179  
181  
183  
194  
196  
259  
261  
264  
367  
368  
392  
409  
413  
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
3
-11-  
VOLUME 14  
3
01. Thomas Iveson, John Aleworth and James Abbes.  
420  
VOLUME 11  
The Reign of Queen Mary I. – Part III.  
3
3
02. John Denley, Gentleman, John Newman, and Patrick Packingham.  
03. William Coker, William Hopper, Henry Laurence, Richard Colliar, Richard  
Wright, and William Stere.  
5
19  
3
04. The Persecution of Ten Martyrs Together, Sent By Certain of The Council To  
Bonner To Be Examined.  
05. Elizabeth Warne.  
06. George Tankerfield  
07. Robert Smith  
21  
3
3
3
3
22  
23  
28  
08. Stephen Harwood, Thomas Fust, William Hale, George King, Thomas Leyes,  
John Wade, and William andrew.  
09. Robert Samuel.  
10. William Allen, Roger Coo, and Thomas Cobb  
58  
60  
71  
3
3
3
11. George Catmer, Robert Streater, .Anthony Burward, George Brodbridge, and  
James Tutty; Thomas Hayward and John Goreway.  
12. Robert Glover, Gentleman, and John and William Glover, his Brothers.  
13. Cornelius Bungey  
14. William Wolsey and Robert Pygot.  
15. Ridley and Latimer—Introduction.  
16. Ridley and Latimer Debate with "Antonian."  
17. The Letters of The Reverend Bishop and Martyr, Nicholas Ridley.  
18. Life of Latimer.  
74  
76  
98  
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
100  
105  
111  
127  
143  
177  
212  
246  
252  
289  
19. Letters of Master Latimer.  
20. The Examination of Ridley and Latimer  
21. The Execution of Ridley and Latimer  
22. Treatises of Dr. Ridley  
23. The Peternot Profession.  
24. The Death and End of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, the Enemy of  
God's Word.  
291  
3
25. John Webbe, George Roper, Gregory Parke, William Wiseman, and James Gore  
3
00  
3
3
3
26. John Philpot  
27. The Martyr's Prayer  
28. Letters of Master Philpot.  
302  
388  
389  
VOLUME 12  
The Reign of Queen Mary I. – Part IV.  
3
29. Thomas Whittle, Bartlet Green, John Tudson, John Went, Thomas Browne;  
Isabel Foster, and Joan Warne, alias Lashford.  
5
-12-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
3
3
3
3
3
30. John Lomas, Anne Albright, Joan Catmer, Agnes Snoth, and Joan Sole.  
31. Thomas Cranmer  
32. Agnes Porter and Joan Trunchfield.  
33. John Maundrel, William Coberley, and John Spicer.  
34. Robert Drakes, William Tyms, Richard Spurge, Thomas Spurge, John Cavel,  
49  
52  
151  
153  
George Ambrose  
156  
3
3
3
3
35. The Norfolk Supplication  
36. John Harpole and Joan Beach  
37. John Hullier.  
178  
190  
192  
38. Christopher Lyster, John Mace, John Spencer, Simon Joyne, Richard Nichols  
and John Hamond.  
205  
3
39. Hugh Laverock, John Apprice, Katharine Hut, Elizabeth Thackvel, and Joan  
Horns  
208  
3
3
3
3
3
3
40. Thomas Drowry and Thomas Croker.  
41. Persecution in Suffolk  
42. Sailors Saved Through the Power of Faith.  
43. Other Martyrs, June 1556.  
44. Thirteen Martyrs Burned at Stratford-Le-Bow.  
45. Trouble and Business in the Diocese of Lichfield and Elsewhere, June-July 1556  
32  
213  
216  
219  
223  
225  
2
3
3
3
3
3
46. John Fortune, Otherwise Cutler.  
237  
242  
293  
314  
47. The Death of John Careless, in the King's Bench.  
48. Julius Palmer, John Gwin and Thomas askin  
49. Persecution in Ipswich.  
50. Katharine Cawches, Guillemine Gilbert, Perotine Massey, and An Infant, the Son  
of Perotine Massey.  
51.Other Martyrs in 1556  
322  
337  
3
THE TWELFTH BOOK.  
CONTAINING THE BLOODY DOINGS AND PERSECUTIONS OF THE  
ADVERSARIES, AGAINST THE FAITHFUL AND TRUE SERVANTS OF  
CHRIST, WITH THE PARTICULAR PROCESSES AND NAMES OF SUCH AS  
WERE PUT TO SLAUGHTER FROM THE BEGINNING OF JANUARY, 1557,  
AND THE FIFTH YEAR OF QUEEN MARY.  
3
3
3
52. The Visitation at Cambridge; Exhumations and Burnings.  
53. Persecution in Canterbury.  
54. A Bloody Commission Given Forth By King Philip and Queen Mary, To  
Persecute the Poor Members of Christ.  
358  
395  
399  
3
3
55. The Apprehension of Two and Twenty Prisoners, Sent Up Together For God's  
Word, To London, From Colchester.  
403  
56.Thomas Loseby, Henry Ramsey, Thomas Thirtel, Margaret Hide, and Agnes  
Stanley  
412  
3
3
57. Stephen Gratwick  
58. Edmund Allin and Others, Martyred in Kent.  
418  
426  
-13-  
VOLUME 14  
3
3
59.Matthew Plaise  
60. Richard Woodman and Nine Others.  
437  
444  
VOLUME 13  
The Reign of Queen Mary I. – Part V.  
61. Ambrose (first name unknown), Richard Lush, Thomas Read, Simon Miller and  
3
Elizabeth Cooper  
62. Ten Colchester Martyrs  
63. George Eagles  
64. Richard Crashfield  
8
11  
25  
30  
35  
41  
61  
65  
71  
73  
75  
80  
93  
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
65. Joyce Lewes.  
66. Ralph Allerton, James Austoo, Margery Austoo, and Richard Roth  
67. Agnes Bongeor, Margaret Thurston and John Kurde  
68. John Noyes  
69. Cicely Ormes.  
70. Persecution in Lichfield and Chichester.  
71. Thomas Spurdance  
72. John Hallingdale, William Sparrow, and Richard Gibson  
73. John Rough and Margaret Mearing  
ANNO 1558.  
74. Cutbert Symson, Hugh Foxe and John Devenish.  
75. William Nichol.  
76. William Seaman, Thomas Carman, and Thomas Hudson.  
77. Mother Benet.  
78. Three Colchester Martyrs.  
79. Proclamation against Godly Books.  
80. Thirteen Islington Martyrs.  
81. Richard Yeoman.  
82. John Alcock.  
83. Thomas Benbridge, Gentleman and Martyr  
84. The Unjust Execution and Martyrdom of Four, Burnt at St. Edmund's Bury.152  
85. Alice Driver and Alexander Gouch.  
86. Philip Humfrey, and John and Henry David.  
87. Prest's Wife, a Godly Poor Woman which Suffered at Exeter.  
88. Richard Sharp, Thomas Benion, and Thomas Hale  
89. The Last Martyrs  
90. John Hunt and Richard White  
91. Will Fetty, a Young Lad of eight years old, Scourged to Death in Bishop  
Bonner's House in London.  
92. The Bishops' Certificate  
93. Martyrs in Spain and Portugal.  
94. Scourgings and Beatings.  
Some Who Escaped Martyrdom  
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
103  
113  
114  
119  
120  
121  
122  
144  
147  
149  
154  
160  
161  
168  
170  
173  
179  
182  
184  
188  
203  
3
3
3
-14-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
95. William Living and John Lithall  
96. Edward Grew and William Browne  
97. Elizabeth Young.  
3
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
203  
211  
213  
234  
235  
237  
238  
239  
241  
242  
243  
245  
246  
247  
248  
250  
253  
254  
256  
260  
263  
265  
273  
274  
277  
278  
279  
280  
281  
282  
283  
295  
303  
307  
331  
334  
356  
372  
98. Elizabeth Lawson.  
99. Thomas Christenmass and William Wats.  
00. John Glover of Mancetter, Gentleman.  
01. One Dabney, a Painter.  
02. Alexander Wimshurst, Minister.  
03. The Story of one Bosome's Wife.  
04. The Lady Knevet, of Wymondham, in Norfolk.  
05. John Davis, a Child Under Twelve Years of Age.  
06. Mistress Roberts, of Hawkhurst, in Kent.  
07. Mistress Anne Lacy, a Widow in Nottinghamshire.  
08. Crossman's Wife, of Tibenham, in Norfolk.  
09. The Congregation at Stoke, in Suffolk.  
10. The Preservation of the Congregation at London.  
11. Englishmen Preserved at the Taking of Calais.  
12. Edward Benet.  
13. Jeffery Hurst, Brother-in-Law to George Marsh the Martyr.  
14. William Wood of Kent.  
15. Simon Grinæus.  
16. The Lady Katharine, Duchess of Suffolk.  
17. A Story of Thomas Horton, Minister.  
18. Thomas Sprat, of Kent, Tanner.  
19. The Trouble of John Cornet.  
20. Thomas Bryce.  
21. Gertrude Crokhay.  
22. William Mauldon.  
23. Robert Horneby.  
24. Mistress Sands.  
25. Thomas Rose.  
26. Dr. Sands  
27. The Faithful of Ipswich  
28. The Lady Elizabeth  
29. The Failure of Queen Mary's Persecution.  
30. The Severe Punishment of God Upon Persecutors and Blasphemers  
31. Foreign Examples of Persecutors Plagued by God's Hand.  
32. John Whitman  
33. Admonition to the Reader, Concerning the Examples Above Mentioned. 374  
34. Queen Elizabeth.  
381  
390  
410  
35. The Disputation at Westminster.  
36. Protestantism Re-Established.  
-15-  
VOLUME 14  
THE APPENDIX OF SUCH MATTERS, AS HAVE BEEN OMITTED, OR  
NEWLY INSERTED.  
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
37. Of Sir Roger Acton and Others  
38. John Frith.  
39. William Plane.  
412  
412  
418  
418  
419  
419  
428  
429  
431  
432  
436  
440  
443  
445  
40. A Note of Lady Jane.  
41. A Letter of Queen Mary to the Duke of Norfolk.  
42. Ridley's Treatise Against Images.  
43. A Note of Master Ridley.  
44.A Note Concerning Dr. Cranmer in His Disputation.  
45. A Note of Bishop Ferrar.  
46. Thomas Hitton, Martyr  
47. William Hastlen.  
48. Verses Laid in Queen Mary's Closet Upon Her Desk  
49. An Instruction of King Edward the Sixth  
50. A Letter of One John Melvyn, Prisoner in Newgate.  
51. A Note Concerning the Trouble of Julius Palmer, lately come to my Hands.448  
52. The Confession of Patrick Patingham,  
53. A Certain Letter of William Tyms.  
54. A Note of William Gie.  
55. A Note of Michael's Wife.  
56. A Note of John Spicer.  
57. A Note of Mandrel.  
58. A Note of Elizabeth Pepper.  
59. A Note of One Confessing God's Truth at the Gallows.  
60. A Note of Gertrude Crockhay.  
61. A Note of William Wood.  
450  
451  
453  
454  
455  
456  
457  
458  
459  
462  
464  
471  
473  
474  
475  
476  
477  
478  
481  
483  
485  
486  
489  
490  
496  
62. John Alcocke.  
63. Certain Cautions of the Author to the Reader  
64. Notes omitted of them that were Burnt at Bristol.  
65. A Note of Prest's Wife, of Exeter.  
66. The Martyrdom of One Snel  
67. A Story of One Laremouth, Omitted in This History.  
68. A Letter of William Hunter  
69. An Oration of Nicholas Bacon  
70. Richard Atkins.  
71. Dr. Story, Persecutor  
72. Queen Mary's Scourge of Persecution.  
73. Thomas Parkinson  
74. A Note of Ralph Lurdane, Persecutor of George Eagles.  
75. A Brief Note Concerning the Horrible Massacre in France, anno 1572.  
76. The Conclusion of the Work.  
-16-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
List of Illustrations  
Volume 1.  
The emperor Commodus casting a dart at the wild beasts  
Title Page of Source Text  
The Crucifixion of Christ  
Frontispiece  
8
29  
The martyrdom of St. Stephen  
The martyrdom of St. Andrew  
The Martyrdom of St. Peter  
Rome  
36  
38  
42  
54  
The martrydom of St. Polycarp  
Christians Wandering in the Wilderness  
St. Lawrence being tortured  
The prelates before the Cæsar Constantius  
St. Alban's Abbey  
Martrydom of St. Eulalia  
Edwin and the stranger  
A procession  
A ruined Monastery.  
Map of Englandunder the Heptarchy  
Battle between Danes and Saxons  
The Death of St. Edmund  
King Alfred and the Cakes  
The Death of Edwin  
The Murder of King Edward the Martyr  
The Tomb of Edward the Confessor  
Dover  
65  
117  
136  
161  
178  
190  
239  
254  
266  
269  
276  
278  
282  
295  
317  
333  
345  
382  
A Gateway  
Volume 2.  
Portrait of John Fox  
Frontispiece  
The murder of Thomas À Becket  
Turin and the plain of Piedmont  
Leicester  
29  
43  
51  
Acre  
80  
Battle between Crusaders and Saracens  
The Shooting of King Richard  
Prince Arthur's body taken from the river  
Canterbury  
85  
90  
93  
99  
The tomb of King John  
Grantham Church struck by Lightning  
Lyons  
112  
137  
187  
283  
Jews burnt at the stake  
-17-  
VOLUME 14  
Windsor Castle  
296  
306  
346  
380  
Kenilworth Castle  
Knights Templar burnt at the stake  
Calais  
Volume 3  
Portrait of John Wickliff  
Another Portrait of John Wickliff  
Portrait of Edward III.  
Frontispiece  
52  
66  
Seal of Edward III.  
67  
Tomb of Edward III.  
68  
John Wicliff defending himself.  
70  
The convocation thrown into confusion by an earthquake  
Trial of Herford, Reppington and Ashton  
Oxford  
The Burning of the bones of John Wickliff  
Leicester  
The Murder of Thomas Woodstock  
The burning of William Sautre  
The horrible burning of John Badby  
The examination of William Thorpe  
William Thorpe in prison  
A peasant carrying a sack of straw as a penance  
Storm at the coronation of Henry V  
Lord Cobham and the King  
82  
89  
101  
116  
205  
227  
239  
250  
265  
302  
319  
325  
328  
332  
395  
Examination of Lord Cobham  
Lollards hanged and burned  
Volume 4  
John Huss preaching  
Frontispiece  
John Huss preaching at the funeral of John, Martin, and Stascon  
The Council disturbed by an Owl  
Pope martin Riding in Procession  
John Huss speaking after dinner  
John Huss and the Franciscan  
John Huss in prison  
9
14  
22  
31  
34  
36  
The burning of John Huss's books  
The Trial of John Huss  
55  
85  
The Execution of John Huss  
99  
Portrait of Jerome of Prague  
116  
121  
129  
135  
146  
Jerome of Prague in the Stocks  
Execution of Jerome of Prague  
The Trial of John Claydon  
The Execution of John Oldcastle  
-18-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
The Emperor Kissing Pope Martin's feet  
Zisca Destroying the Images  
Massacre of Old People, Women and Children  
A Martyr Being Prepared for Burning At The Stake  
A Martyr Flogged Through The Streets  
Norwich cathedral  
Burial of Plague Victims  
The Burning of the Hussite Soldiers  
Winchester  
Duke Humphrey's Body  
Printers and Printing  
150  
152  
173  
182  
184  
200  
257  
285  
292  
298  
301  
305  
319  
359  
362  
369  
Constantinople  
Tomb of Henry VI  
Portrait of Richard III  
The battle of Bosworth Field  
Smithfield  
Volume 5  
Portrait of John Calvin  
Frontispiece  
Vienna  
38  
51  
80  
90  
92  
Battle between Turks and Christians  
Lollard's Tower, Lambeth Palace  
Various Martyrdoms  
Constantine the emperor embracing Christian bishops  
Bishops of Rome advanced by emperors, Constantine, Theodosius, &c.  
Emperors kissing the pope's feet.  
94  
96  
Henry the Fourth, emperor, waiting three days upon Pope Gregory the Seventh. 97  
Pope Celestine the Fourth crowning the Emperor Henry the Sixth, with his feet. 98  
King Henry the Second kissing the knee of the pope's legate  
King John offering his crown to Pandulph the pope's legate  
Henry the Fourth, emperor, surrendering his crown to the pope  
100  
101  
101  
Frederic the First corrected for holding the Pope's stirrup on the wrong side 106  
The order of the pope's riding 111  
The pope carried on men's shoulders, the emperor and king going before him. 111  
Portrait of Martin Luther  
Martin Luther's Birth-Place  
The debate at Leipsic  
Portrait of Philip Melancthon  
William Tell  
Zurich  
Berne  
Peter Spengler Executed by Drowning  
A Good Man Beheaded  
Rouen  
118  
128  
143  
161  
193  
195  
204  
238  
241  
267  
-19-  
VOLUME 14  
Martyrs Burned at the Stake  
Geneva  
A Martyr Hung over a Fire  
Martyrs Tortured by the Inquisition  
Martyrs Paraded at Valladolid  
Naples  
Martyrs Slain with a Knife  
Martyrs Dragged to the gallows  
A Martyr Dragged and Whipped  
Pignerol  
The Minister of St. Germain Taken by Night  
The Monks defeated by the Angrognians  
The Protestant Church at Bobi  
300  
319  
327  
332  
334  
355  
356  
383  
384  
391  
402  
404  
415  
417  
427  
Soldiers Raiding a House by Night  
The Waldois roll a huge stone on their enemies  
Volume 6  
Portrait of Henry VIII.  
Richard Hun Found Hanged in the Lollard's Tower  
Thomas Man Brought to Execution  
The execution of Christopher Schoomaker  
The Seven Martyrs  
Frontispiece  
27  
45  
50  
66  
Meeting of Henry and Francis  
Cardinal Wolsey and the Dukes  
A Gateway  
Cardinal Wolsey in Procession  
Bilney pulled out of the pulpit  
A Victim on the Rack  
John Tewkesbury carrying a faggot  
James Bainham at the stake  
Frith and Hewet at the stake  
Tyndale at the stake  
105  
117  
123  
124  
138  
183  
188  
201  
213  
311  
416  
Lambert burned at the stake  
Volume 7  
Henry VIII. Trampling the Pope Underfoot  
Collins burned at the stake  
Frontispiece  
6
92  
A Cathedral  
Hereford Cathedral  
Jerome Preaching  
Barnes, Garret and Jerome at the Stake  
An evil monk and a holy martyr  
Marbeck Examined by the Council  
Filmer, Peerson and Testwod burned at the stake  
127  
146  
155  
176  
196  
213  
-20-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Anne Askew burned at the stake  
King Henry with Queen Katharine and the Lord Chancellor in the garden  
Wisehart at the gallows  
269  
281  
363  
365  
West Bow, Edinburgh  
Volume 8  
Portrait of King Edward VI  
Frontispiece  
Bonner refusing to come before the commissioners  
The Royal Wedding  
The execution of William Gardiner  
Edward duke of Somerset on the scaffold  
84  
231  
234  
249  
Volume 9  
Portrait of Queen Mary I  
Queen Mary receiving a letter  
Frontispiece  
37  
Thomas Wyat on the Scaffold  
71  
Lady Jane Grey led to execution  
Cranmer at the Convocation of Oxford  
Queen Mary's Coronation Procession  
Execution of the Duke of Suffolk  
A cat hanged in priest's dress  
Priests doing penance for having taken wives  
John Rogers Burnt at the Stake  
Laurence Saunders in the Bishop's House  
Laurence Saunders burnt at the stake  
Portrait of John Hooper  
83  
105  
239  
244  
250  
263  
320  
325  
339  
349  
364  
391  
411  
416  
420  
John Hooper degraded from his office  
Ancient Gateway, Hadleigh  
Dr. Taylor brought hooded through Brentwood  
Taylor burned at the stake  
Taylor's Monument  
Volume 10  
Portrait of John Bradford  
Frontispiece  
William Hunter at the Stake  
Bishop Ferrar  
33  
49  
The Woman in the cage at London-bridge.  
Chester cathedral  
71  
86  
George Marsh burnt at the stake.  
William Flower Burnt at the stake  
Wats with his Wife and Children  
Bradford on his way to execution  
The execution of Bradford and Leaf  
Bland, Frankesh, Sheterden and Midleton at the Stake  
91  
118  
177  
201  
261  
402  
-21-  
VOLUME 14  
Christoper Wade at the Place of execution  
Volume 11  
411  
Portrait of Hugh Latimer  
The Arrest of George Tankerfield  
Frontispiece  
24  
Smith and his Companions in Newgate  
Manor-house, Mancetter, the Residence of Glover  
William Glover's Body Dragged by Horses  
Bishop Ridley  
Latimer pleading with King Henry VIII for an innocent woman  
Bishop Latimer Preaching  
Latimer Presenting the New Testament to King Henry VIII.  
The Beadle removing Dr. Ridley's cap  
The Execution of Ridley and Latimer  
41  
76  
94  
106  
155  
165  
211  
214  
246  
297  
310  
386  
Stephen Gardiner taken ill at table  
Present gateway in the Lollards' Tower, leading to the dungeon  
John Philpot in Smithfield  
Volume 12  
Portrait of Thomas Cranmer as a Young Man  
The Seven Martyrs at the Stake  
Frontispiece  
5
The Examination of Thomas Whittle  
Greene Visited in Prison  
15  
39  
The Earl of Wiltshire's Spaniel Biting the Pope in the Foot  
Cranmer, Chersey and the Priest  
57  
66  
Cranmer and his Accusers before King Henry VIII  
The Room in the Tower Where Cranmer was Imprisoned  
Dr. Cranmer on Trial  
Cranmer Making his Speech  
The Execution of Cranmer  
Execution of Porter amd Trunchfield  
The Six martyrs at Their Execution  
A Romish Funeral Procession by Moonlight  
Beach and Harpole at the Stake  
Hullier at the Stake  
Laverock and Apprice Brought to Execution in a Cart  
Croker and Drowry at the Stake  
The Rescue of Gregory Crowe  
The Thirteen Martyrs of Stratford-le-Bow  
John Careless Dying in Prison  
Palmer, Gwin and Askin at the Stake  
Palmer at dinner in Bursar Shipper's House  
Palmer and his companions at the place of execution  
Ipswich  
74  
86  
125  
135  
137  
149  
154  
182  
188  
192  
206  
211  
217  
223  
240  
291  
297  
311  
312  
-22-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
The Three Guernsey Women at the Stake  
The Bones of Infants found in a Wall in Lenton Abbey  
The Martyrdom of John Jackson  
Heretics bearing Faggots and Candles  
Phagius's Body Exhumed in St. Michael's Churchyard  
Peter martyr's Wife Exhumed  
The Prisoners Marching through a Town  
The Five Martyrs led to Execution  
323  
328  
336  
352  
376  
391  
401  
410  
430  
442  
The Maidstone Martyrs at the Stake  
The Martyrs of Lewes  
Volume 13  
Portrait of Queen Mary  
Tyrrel torturing Rose Allin  
Frontispiece  
15  
The Examination of Elizabeth Folkes  
The sumner forced to eat his citation of Mary Lewes  
Ralph Allerton at the stake  
21  
35  
41  
John Noyes at the Stake  
65  
Hallingdale, Gibson and Sparrow led to execution  
Cutbert Symson at the stake  
89  
10  
The Islington Martyrs  
122  
128  
140  
147  
168  
179  
200  
213  
243  
271  
274  
297  
307  
316  
335  
350  
365  
374  
376  
Roger Holland with the maid Elizabeth  
Hinshaw and Bonner in the Garden  
A Romish Procession  
Thomas Hale arrested at night  
Cluney carrying Will Fetty  
Bonner and the boys bathing in the Thames  
The Examination of Elizabeth Young  
John Davis Arrested  
Master Berty Defending Himself  
Sprat escaping pursuit  
Dr. Sands Speaking at Cambridge  
Interior of the White Tower (Tower of London)  
Elizabeth Arriving at the Tower  
The Death of Berry  
The Burial of Poor Lazarus  
King Henry II of France Killed at a Joust  
Whitman's Hand Cut Off  
The Burial of Bishop Bonner  
The Bishops of Winchester and Lincoln Brought to the Tower of London  
Frith and the Gentleman Meeting in The Tower  
Hitton taken in Rochester  
408  
413  
432  
490  
The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve  
-23-  
VOLUME 14  
Glossary  
Of obsolete words, or words used in an obsolete sense  
Abearing  
Behaviour  
Abecie  
An ABC i.e. a child's primer for the  
alphabet  
Abrenounce  
Abroach  
To renounce or repudiate  
To set abroach = to start something one  
cannot or will not stop  
Acception  
Accombred  
Accompt  
Acceptance  
Burdened  
Account  
Accustomably  
Acoluthes  
Normally  
Acolytes  
Addict  
Bound by oath or obligation  
Applied  
Adhibited  
Adjure  
To bind under penalty of an oath  
Astonishment  
Admiration  
Advertise  
To warn or advise  
Formal notification or warning  
Praying to the saints  
Adulterer  
Advertisement  
Advocation  
Advouterer  
Advoutry, advowtry  
Advowson  
Affection  
Adultery  
The right of appointment to a benefice  
A disposition or emotional attitude towards  
something  
Affiance  
Affray  
Trust  
To frighten  
-24-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
A blow struck unexpectedly at an  
After-clap  
opponent who had thought the fight was  
over.  
Againstond, againstand  
Agamist  
Withstand, defeat  
One who opposes the institution of  
marriage  
Agnize  
To acknowledge  
Rustic, wild  
Agrest  
Ale-stake  
Allegation  
Allege  
An alehouse sign  
Argument  
To cite in argument  
Attachment  
Alligation  
All-to  
Very much  
Almany  
Almose  
Almous  
Ambage  
Germany  
Alms  
Of or relating to almsgiving or charity  
Roundabout or deceitfully ambiguous  
speech; legal technicalities  
Ambassade  
Ambassage  
Amerce  
Ambassadorship  
A diplomatic mission  
To fine or tax heavily  
Amice  
A shawl of white linen, part of a priest's  
vestments  
Amplect  
Ampliated  
Anences  
Annat  
To embrace  
Enlarged or extended  
Relating to; as anences = as regards  
The income of a diocese or benefice for  
the first year of a new appointee's tenure,  
which was given to the Pope.  
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VOLUME 14  
Annointed  
Annealed  
Annoiling  
Annuates  
Antelation  
Apaid  
Anointing with sacred oil  
Instructions given by signs or gestures  
A right of preference or precedence  
Satisfied  
Apertly  
Openly  
Apostoil  
Apostule  
Appair  
The pope  
A marginal comment or footnote  
To damage or weaken  
Apparitor  
Appellatores  
An official, or civil or ecclestiacal servant  
One who makes a false accusation for a  
reward  
Applausion  
Appliable to their beck  
Appone  
Applause, mass shouting or cheering  
Ready to obey them  
To make use of  
Appose  
To examine or question  
To interrogate or question in court  
Raised up  
Appose  
Arectet  
Arrear  
To gather and prepare an army  
Said, mentioned  
Articulate  
Ascited  
Summoned  
Assay  
Formally tasting food before giving it to a  
king or other important person  
Assize  
To impose or assess a tax; or, to set the  
price of a staple foodstuff etc.  
Assoil  
To pardon, absolve  
To reduce  
Assuage  
-26-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Astonied  
Astonyings  
At jar  
Astonished  
Astonishment, confusion  
Of different opinions  
Attainder  
Forfeiture of all property rights, which was  
a penalty for treason or felony;  
Attemperate  
Auditory  
Austin  
To adapt  
Audience  
St. Augustine of Hippo  
Altar  
Auter  
Avoid  
1. To depart  
2
. To discharge or excrete  
Avouch  
Avowe  
Awmbry  
Ayens  
Baily  
To declare publicly  
Vow  
A storehouse  
Against  
Bailiff, steward  
Ballet  
A ballad, especially a scurrilous or satirical  
one.  
Ballets  
Band  
Ballads  
Agreement, contract  
A big savage dog  
A ruffian or hired bully  
A cymbal  
Ban-dog  
Barrator  
Basin  
Bassa  
A Turkish general or pasha  
Debate, strife  
Bate  
Battledore  
A flat wooden club used to beat cloth  
when washing it  
Beadman, Beadsman  
A person employed or appointed to pray  
-27-  
VOLUME 14  
for others  
Beadroll  
A list of people to be prayed for.  
Bead-roll  
A long list of names  
Bearing sheet  
A winding-sheet or shroud in which a  
corpse is wrapped for burial  
Bearward  
Beck  
A keeper or trainer of performing bears  
Call  
Bedlamite  
Beetle  
A madman  
A mallet  
Beetle-brow  
A person with shaggy eyebrows, a low  
sullen scoundrel  
Beguily  
In wily beguily = trying to be clever but  
only succeeding in deceiving oneself;  
being "too clever by half"  
Behanged  
Behewed  
Behight  
Decorated with hanging tapestries etc.  
Hacked with an axe  
Gave, given  
The best sheep in a flock  
Gluttony  
Bell-wether  
Belly-cheer  
Bene, ben  
Benemen, Benomin  
Bestead  
Are  
Deprive, take away from  
Beset  
Beth  
Are, is  
Bewray  
To betray  
Bill  
A weapon resembling a pike, with a spear  
blade, and a hook sharpened on the inside  
of the curve.  
Bird-bolt  
A short arrow with a broad, flat head, used  
for shooting birds.  
-28-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Original sin; in Christian theology an  
Birth-poison  
inherent inclination to sinfulness which is  
part of human nature  
Bite-sheep  
Blaze  
A bishop who ill-treats his flock  
To proclaim or declare  
Blemished  
Bliue  
Disconcerted  
Believe  
Bobbed  
Bolt  
Beaten  
To sift  
Bonchief  
Bonhomme  
Borsholder  
Bosom sermon  
Bounce  
Boyly  
Good fortune, benefit  
One of an order of begging friars  
A parish constable  
A sermon learned by heart and recited  
To thump  
Boyish  
Brabbling  
Brable  
Quarrelling,  
To quarrel loudly  
Brary  
One who brays or talks nonsense  
Brast  
Burst  
Brenn  
Burn  
Brennen  
Brent  
Burn  
Burnt  
Bribe  
To steal  
Brickle  
Brim  
Fragile, brittle  
Brightly shining  
Bristow  
Broom-faggot  
Bristol  
A bundle of the broom plant (Genista  
-29-  
VOLUME 14  
scoparius) used for kindling  
Bruit  
A noise or rumour. Bruited abroad =  
rumoured  
Brunt  
A blow  
Buckle  
Struggle with  
Buckler  
Bug  
A shield  
A ghost, monster or other terrifying thing  
A beam, baulk of timber  
An ambush  
Bulk  
Bushment  
Buskle  
To work busily, bustle about  
An archery range; a target  
Obedient  
Butt  
Buxom  
Buxumnesse  
By-cavillation  
Byelden  
Byhoten  
Byneme, Bynome  
Caitiff  
Obedience  
Legal quibbling or trickery  
Build  
Promised  
Deprive, take away from  
A miserable person  
An immoral woman  
Callet  
Camping cure  
A benefice which involves serving God by  
warfare  
Canicular  
Canivise  
In canicular days: dog-days, early August  
Apparently a nonce-word invented by  
Foxe; presumably "To make into a dog"  
Canning  
Canning  
Canvassed  
Ability  
Memorizing  
Beaten, knocked about, defeated  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Believing in the Catholic doctrine of  
Capernaitical  
transubstantiation; Capernaites = those  
who believe it  
Capper  
Cark  
A cap-maker  
Responsibility  
A low churl or villain  
A chasuble  
Carle  
Casule  
Catchpole  
Contemptuous word for a debt- or tax-  
collector  
Cater-cousin  
Caterpillar  
Cautel  
A very close friend  
A robber or extortionist  
A quibble or reservation  
Legal quibbles or trickery  
Blindness, poor eyesight  
Cavillations  
Cecity  
Celsitude  
High rank, majesty; your celsitude = your  
highness  
Cense  
To bless with incense  
Certainly  
Certes  
Chafe  
A fit of temper; fury  
Merchandise  
Chaffare  
Chambering  
Channel  
Sexual sin, lewdness  
Gutter  
Chantries, Chantry-masses  
Masses performed daily or at set intervals  
as one of the conditions of a legacy or  
endowment  
Chap-men  
Chaps  
Merchants  
Fissures  
Chargeous  
Dependent upon  
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VOLUME 14  
A charter or official decree.  
Chart  
Blank chart = a blank royal decree to be  
filled in with the names etc. of those it will  
refer to  
Cheeping  
Cheer  
Flattering words  
Facial expression  
Chequer  
In chequer matters: Lawsuits relating to  
the collection of royal revenue  
Chesille  
A chasuble  
Chevance  
A way of raising money  
Success, accomplishments  
Childbirth, labour  
Chievance  
Child-travail  
Chimer, chimere  
A loose gown with red sleeves, worn by a  
bishop  
Chisil  
A chasuble  
Chrismatory  
1) A sacred anointing  
2
) A jar containing the anointing oil called  
chrism.  
Chrisoms  
Chrism, a holy oil used for anointing  
Having a big fat head  
Chuff-headed  
Cipher in Agrime  
Circumscriptible  
The zero in the Arabic numerals  
Capable of being measured; subject to  
limits of size or space  
Civilian  
Civilian  
Clamper  
Clanculary  
Clennere  
Clepe  
A lawyer specialising in civil law  
A lawyer specialising in civil law.  
To botch together  
Secret  
To clean, absolve  
Call  
-32-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
A monk or nun who stays in a monastery  
Cloisterer  
or convent; opposed to a friar, who  
wanders around begging.  
Closter  
Clout  
An enclosure  
N) A cloth or wrapping  
V) To wrap up  
Coact  
To coerce  
Coercive  
Coactive  
Coadjutor  
Coast  
An assistant  
To attack  
Coat card  
A court or picture card in a pack of playing  
cards  
Cock in the hoop  
To set cock in the hoop = to act boastfully  
or presumptuously  
Cockle  
Cog  
A weed of corn fields (Lychnis githago)  
To foist or publish a forged document  
To embrace, cuddle  
Coll  
Collar  
Collateral  
To wrestle  
Of equal rank; one of the joint holders of  
an office  
Collation  
1) Appointment of a clergyman to a  
benefice  
2
3
) A commentary on scripture  
) Comparison  
Collect  
A prayer said before the Epistle reading in  
the Mass  
Colleginer  
Collyrium  
Colourable  
Comfortable  
A fellow of a college  
Eye-salve  
Superficially convincing, but in fact false  
Comforting  
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VOLUME 14  
1) A conference  
) At a university, the formal conferring of  
Commencement  
2
degrees.  
Commendations  
Comminatory  
Prayers for the dead  
1) Threatening punishment or revenge  
2
) A sealed-off place, a cloister  
Commissary  
Commixion  
The appointed deputy of a bishop  
Mingling, mixing together; in the Mass,  
the act of putting a small part of the host  
into the wine.  
Commodity  
Commonly  
Commorant  
Communed  
Companied  
Compass  
Advantage  
A public meeting  
Officially resident  
Discussed  
Associated with  
A circle, hence: roundabout way; circular  
or other enclosure; boundaries or limits  
Compline  
Compter  
A church service held in the evening  
A lock-up  
Con  
To study  
Con-captives  
Concion  
Fellow-prisoners  
A public speech  
Concomitation  
Consubstantiation, i.e. the co-existence of  
bread and wine, and the body and blood of  
Christ, in the Eucharist  
Concupiscence  
Overpowering desire (not necessarily  
sexual)  
Concupiscentious  
Conduct  
Lustful, unchaste  
A chaplain  
-34-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Confer  
To compare  
Confute  
To prove wrong  
Congrue, Congruent  
Conject  
Appropriate, suitable  
To conjecture or suppose  
Conjunction adversative  
A phrase (beginning with e.g. but or  
however) qualifying or contradicting the  
one before  
Conning  
Wisdom  
Consistory  
A court presided over by a bishop, for  
trying religious or ecclesiastical cases  
Conspurcate  
Filthy, defiled  
Constitute proctors  
To appoint lawyers to represent oneself in  
court  
Contemn  
To despise  
Contentation  
Continue  
Contentment, satisfaction  
Contents  
Control  
To contradict or object to some statement  
Contemptuous refusal to obey  
Degrading or insulting  
Insults  
Contumacy  
Contumelious  
Contumely, Contumelies  
Convent  
(V) To summon before a court  
A clandestine or illegal religious meeting  
A cunning deceitful action  
Conventicle  
Conveyance  
Cope  
1) A long silken cloak worn as an  
ecclesiastical vestment  
2
) A senior churchman, such as might  
wear one.  
Coping tank  
Copulative  
A tall narrow conical hat  
Forming a connected whole  
-35-  
VOLUME 14  
A greedy or rapacious person  
Cormorant  
Cornleader  
A carter of grain  
Corporace, corporas  
A cloth laid on the altar on which the  
chalice and paten are placed  
Corporal  
N) A cloth on which consecrated hosts are  
laid or which is used to wrap them  
A) --  
1
) of the body, physical; Corporally =  
physically.  
) in Corporal oath, one taken while  
2
holding a physical object, such as a Bible,  
relic, or consecrated host.  
Coste  
Breast  
Couetice  
Courser  
Courtesan  
Covetousness  
A war-horse  
A member of the Papal Curia  
A first cousin  
Cousin-germain, Cousin-  
german  
Covetise  
Cowcher  
Covetousness  
A very large book, which can only be read  
on a table or lectern  
Craker  
A blowhard or boaster  
Cramp-ring  
A ring blessed by the King on Good  
Friday, believed to be a protection against  
cramps, fits etc.  
Crayer  
A small trading ship  
Criminous  
Croised  
Criminal; relating to crime  
Marked with a cross; having take the cross  
as a crusader  
Croisy  
To bestow the cross upon someone, i.e. to  
declare him a crusader  
Croysies  
Crusaders  
-36-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Crudelity  
Cullen  
Cruelty  
Cologne, in Germany  
Burden  
Cumber  
Currier  
One whose trade is the preparation and  
dyeing of leather  
Customable  
Customer  
Customary or habitual  
A customs officer or collector of customs  
duties  
Dag  
A pistol  
Damnified  
Damp  
Damaged or injured  
A state of stupefaction  
Darnel  
A weed of cornfields, (Lolium  
temulentum), also known as cockle or  
tares, and referred to by Jesus in Matthew  
c. 13 v.24-30.  
Dastard  
Datary  
A coward  
A papal officer; originally one whose  
function was to register and date Papal  
documents  
Decretal  
Deduce  
Originally, a letter written by a Pope in  
response to a query; later, any papal decree  
or document  
1) To declare or describe  
2
) To bring  
Deducted  
Deface  
Traced or described from a date.  
To abash, humiliate, put out of  
countenance.  
Defension  
Dehort  
The formal public defence of his  
dissertation by a candidate for a university  
degree  
To advise or exhort against something  
-37-  
VOLUME 14  
To throw down. Deject oneself = humble  
Deject  
oneself  
Delated  
Denounced to the authorities, informed  
against  
Deme, Demen  
Demi-lance  
Demurrer  
Judge  
A short-shafted lance  
In law, a plea that the facts alleged do not  
amount to a tort or crime; loosely, any  
legal objection  
Denizen  
Depeach  
Descant  
Detour  
A naturalized citizen  
To despatch a messenger  
In shift of descant = changing the argument  
Debtor  
Detour  
Debtor  
Deturbate  
Devotion  
To cast down or thrust out  
At his devotion = at his command, free for  
his use.  
Deyeden  
Dial  
Died  
A watch  
Didrachma  
Dignation  
A two-drachma coin  
The act of a superior honouring or  
recognizing an inferior  
Dimissory  
A letter from a bishop recommending  
someone as fit for ordination or  
ecclesiastical office  
Ding  
To strike, beat  
Dirige  
The matins of the Service for the dead,  
beginning Dirige, Domine, Deus meus, in  
conspectu tuo viam meam.  
Dirt-dauber  
A plasterer esp. one who uses mud to make  
-38-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
wattle-and-daub walls  
Debate  
Disceptation  
Discommodity  
Disgarnish  
Dishonest  
Disme  
Disadvantage  
To deprive of  
To defile  
A 10% tax or charge  
Disparkle, disperkle  
Dispensator  
Disperkle  
To scatter or disperse  
One who dispenses or distributes goods  
To scatter, disperse  
To punish  
Disple  
Disseize  
To dispossess  
Dissever  
To separate  
Dissimule  
To deceive by hiding one's true feelings or  
intentions  
Distain  
Dishonour  
Distinction  
A division or section of a book or  
document  
Divers  
Many, several  
A woman scholar  
Judgement  
Doctress  
Dome  
Domesmen  
Donates  
Judges  
An honorary or temporary member of a  
religious order  
Donative  
A benefice which can be bestowed by the  
founder or patron without reference to the  
bishop or abbot.  
Dotipole  
Dought  
A dotty-headed person  
Strongly  
-39-  
VOLUME 14  
Spent brewer's grains, sometimes used as  
Draff  
animal feed.  
Draft  
Spent brewing grains used as animal feed  
A privy (US: bathroom)  
An incompetent thief  
Draught  
Dromedary  
Drumflade  
Dry-fats  
A kind of trumpet  
A large basket or barrel for holding dry  
goods  
Dubitation  
Dump  
Doubt  
A state of bewilderment; In his dumps =  
reduced to silence  
Durance  
Ear  
Imprisonment  
To plough  
Earlich  
Early  
Eft . . . eft . .  
Eftsoons  
Eghenen  
Embassage  
Emblemish  
Embull  
First . . . then . .  
Soon afterwards, immediately  
Eyes  
A diplomatic mission  
To damage or disfigure  
To seal  
Emmet  
An ant  
Empery  
Endue  
Government or dominion  
To grant or bestow something; to be  
endued with = to have  
Enduing  
Enervate  
Enfeoff  
Endowing  
To destroy  
To assign a fief of property or office to  
someone  
-40-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
To say that something is grievous  
Engrieve  
Engrossed  
Enmious  
Enow  
Written down  
Hostile  
Enough  
Ensample  
Ensue  
Example  
To follow  
Ententive  
Entitle  
Assiduous in learning  
To write down a properly edited version of  
something  
Environ  
To surround  
Epicure  
An atheist  
Esay  
The prophet Isiah  
Riches obtained by plunder  
Renounce, reject  
A written decree or writ  
Spy  
Escheat  
Eschew  
Escript  
Espie  
Estall  
To pay by installments  
Pagans  
Ethnics  
Evacuate  
Evangely, Evangelies  
Even  
To nullify  
The Gospels  
The day before a feast day  
Fellow-Christians  
Each one  
Even-christened  
Everichone  
Examinate  
A person under examination, either as  
witness or accused  
Excerp  
Summarize  
Excheat  
Confiscation of property, or encroachment  
-41-  
VOLUME 14  
on the privileges of another  
Excoriate  
Exeden  
To flay  
Asked  
Exhibition  
Exonerate  
A pension or allowance of money  
To remove an office or responsibility from  
someone  
Exorable  
Exornate  
Experiment  
Expugn  
Capable of being moved by pity or prayer  
To embellish or exaggerate  
To examine or test  
To conquer or overcome  
Extravagant  
A papal decree not included in the standard  
list  
Face  
A façade or sham  
Extremely wicked  
Deed  
Facinorous  
Fact  
Factor  
Faggot  
Faled  
An agent or deputy  
A bundle of firewood  
Broken or destroyed  
A shrine  
Fane  
Fardel  
Farmary  
Farmer  
A bundle or parcel  
An infirmary  
1) A bailiff  
2
) a tenant or lessee  
Fatigation  
Fatue  
Weariness, long drawn-out effort  
A taboo word in Biblical times;  
"Whosoever shall say, Fatue, shall be in  
danger of hell fire." (Matt. 5. 23)  
Fautor  
A patron, supporter or abettor  
-42-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Fedity  
Feile  
Filthiness  
Many  
Feoffer  
In feoffer's hold: Literally, held as a feudal  
possession; metaphorically, as here,  
borrowed from someone else  
Feoffment  
Under the feudal system, the action of  
assigning lands to someone; or, the legal  
right to the lands so assigned  
Ferial  
Ferula  
A weekday  
A flat piece of wood used for punishing  
schoolchildren  
Fet  
Fetched  
Fetch  
(V) To steal by fraud or cunning  
(N) Such an act of theft or dishonest trick  
Figurate  
To symbolize  
Fire-house  
A house in which a fire is regularly lit (i.e.  
a dwelling-house)  
Flagitious  
Fleen  
Very wicked  
Fled from  
Fleer  
To sneer or mock  
A blow  
Flewet  
Flight-shot  
The distance an arrow can be shot from a  
bow  
Floten  
Flung  
Foil  
Flown  
Rushed  
A defeat  
Foins  
Fond  
Trimmings of marten fur  
(A) Foolish  
(V) To speak foolishly  
Fore-elder  
An ancestor  
-43-  
VOLUME 14  
Preface  
Foreface  
Forefact  
Forefend  
Foreshield  
Foreslack  
Foreslow  
Forfend  
Form  
A criminal accusation  
To prevent  
To prevent, avert  
To neglect  
To delay  
To prevent  
A bench  
Forward  
Founder  
Foundment  
Frail  
A contract or agreement  
A maker of moulded metal objects  
Basis, foundation  
A basket  
Frater wall  
Fraught  
Fray  
The wall of the refectory in a monastery  
Filled with; (of a ship) fully laden.  
To frighten  
Fray-bug  
An imaginary object of fear, bogey-man,  
etc.  
Freedom  
An area in or around a city, whose  
inhabitants had certain privileges or  
exemptions from taxation which prevailed  
elsewhere.  
Frele  
Frail  
Fretted  
1) Worn, rubbed  
2
) Inlaid with precious metal or stones  
Frisk  
A dance step or caper  
A dress in Dutch or German style  
A sneer  
Frowes  
Frump  
Fulleden  
Baptised  
-44-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
To baptise  
Fullen  
Fuller  
A person whose occupation is the cleaning  
and preparation of newly-woven cloth  
Fumish  
Furniture  
Fustian  
Angry, irascible  
Equipment  
A coarse cloth of cotton and linen mixed  
Flogging  
Fustigation  
Gage  
(V) To pledge  
(N)An object given as a pledge  
Gains  
Gaudy jewellery, clothing etc.  
To oppose  
Gainstand  
Gang-Monday  
The Monday before Ascension Thursday  
(which is forty days after Easter)  
Gape  
To gag at or be unable to swallow  
To make something happen  
Commotion, disturbance  
A treasure chest, or collection of valuables  
A granary  
Gar  
Garboil  
Gardeviance  
Garner  
Gat  
Got  
Gaud  
A worthless trinket  
Gaude  
Gawishness  
Gazingstock  
Gear  
A public performance or display  
Ostentatious display of foolish fripperies  
Something people stare at  
A whim or fit of passion  
Spiritual, spiritually  
Ghostly  
Gif  
If  
Gile  
Guile, dishonesty  
-45-  
VOLUME 14  
To offend against  
Gilten  
Gin  
A mechanism  
Glave  
A weapon consisting of a short, broad  
blade fixed to a long handle  
Glaverer  
Glavering  
Gleer  
A flattering deceiver  
Flattering, deceiving  
To smear with paint  
Gleve  
The winning-post of a race  
Glose, Gloze  
To explain, or more often distort, the  
meaning of a text; to speak deceitfully  
Glossary  
Gloss-writer  
Gnatho  
A commentary or explanation  
A writer of commentaries, or a spin-doctor  
A flattering parasite  
Goff  
In a barn which is divided into bays by  
internal projections from the walls, a goff  
is the amount of grain which will fir into  
one of the bays  
Gossopry  
The relationship of God-parent and God-  
child  
Graffed  
Gra-mercies  
Groat  
Set firmly, grafted  
Thank you very much  
A fourpenny piece  
Grope  
To find out someone's business or secrets  
by cunning  
Groundsel  
Grundy  
Gyves  
A door-sill or threshold  
A short person  
Leg-irons, fetters  
To drag away  
Hale  
Hanaper  
An office of the court of chancery, which  
collected fees for sealing and registration  
-46-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
of documents  
A firm grasp  
To hold tightly  
Handfast  
Hand-fast  
Hanger  
A short sword hung from the belt  
Harborous  
Hardly  
Generous, hospitable  
1) With great hardness and cruelty  
2
) With great difficulty  
Harness  
Hastler  
Armour  
A cook's assistant, who turned the spit for  
roasting meat.  
Hay-golph  
Hearse  
A haystack  
A wooden framework carrying a large  
number of candles, hangings etc., borne  
over a coffin.  
Heave-offering  
An offering which is held up high by the  
priest for the people to see  
Helme-sheaves  
Hem  
Bundles of straw  
Them  
Her  
Their  
Heren  
Theirs  
Hery  
To worship  
Hest  
Commandment  
Hight  
Was named  
Hobby  
Holden  
Holocaust  
A kind of falcon (Falco subbuteo)  
Held  
A sacrifice where the entire animal is burnt  
(not just the inedible bits, as was more  
usual)  
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VOLUME 14  
Holp, Holpen  
Holydeme  
Homely  
Helped  
Holiness  
Friendly, familiar, over-familiar  
Honest  
To confer honour on something  
Hoorehouse  
Horen  
A Brothel  
Whores  
Horsed up  
Pulled up on a man's back or a frame, to be  
whipped  
Hosen  
Hose, stockings  
Hostelar  
Housel  
The landlady of an inn  
(N) The Eucharist  
(V) To administer the Eucharist  
Hudder-mudder  
Huddipeak  
Hundred  
Secret, secrecy  
A blockhead  
A subdivision of a county  
Hutching  
Literally: crouching or bowing low.  
Figuratively: with abject humility  
Hylden  
Hold  
Hyperbolismum  
Hypotyposis  
Ich  
An instance of dishonest exaggeration  
A vivid description of a scene  
I
Ides  
The thirteenth or fifteenth day of the  
month  
Ignavy  
Negligence or laziness  
To jeer or mock  
Helplessness  
Illude  
Imbecility  
Imbrued  
Stained with blood  
-48-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Imitation  
Adoption as a heir  
Monstrous cruelty  
Incorruptible  
Insertion  
Immanity  
Immarcessible  
Immission  
Imp  
A child  
Impanate  
Embodied in bread  
Unbearable  
Unbearable  
An abscess  
Importable  
Importable  
Imposthume  
Impotent  
Enfeebled  
Impotionate  
Impropriate  
Inabilitation  
Incensive  
Incommodity  
Incontinency  
Incontinent, Incontinently  
Indent  
To poison  
Assigned  
Unfitness, disqualification  
Full of anger  
Disadvantage  
Lechery  
Immediately  
To make a formal promise or contract  
A period of fifteen years  
Impartiality  
Indiction  
Indifferency  
Indurate  
Hardened, stubborn or callous  
Hardening  
Induration  
Inedge  
To slip in edgeways  
To make infamous  
Imperfect  
Infame  
Infect  
Infeoff  
To assign a fief of property or office to  
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VOLUME 14  
someone  
Infer  
To state or bring forward as an argument  
Infestine  
Infirmation  
Inspiral  
Troublesome, annoying  
Disproof  
Giving life to  
Insistent  
Instant  
Instantly  
Interdictment  
Insistently  
An interdict, i.e. a punishment laid by the  
church on a town etc., prohibiting any  
church service from being held there  
Intermit  
To interrupt  
Interrogatory  
Interturb  
Intestine  
Invade  
A question formally put to a witness.  
To disturb or interrupt  
Internal  
To attack  
Invitory  
A prayer or verse of the Bible recited at the  
beginning of a church service  
Inwrap  
Isay  
Involve  
The prophet Isaiah  
Jack  
A jacket with metal plates or chain-mail  
sewn to it  
Jakes  
A privy (U.S: bathroom)  
A story-teller  
Jangler  
Javel  
A low scoundrel  
Jill  
An immoral woman  
Duress, punishment  
Conjuring tricks  
Jouresse  
Juggling-casts  
Jurate, Jurat  
A lay magistrate or alderman, A sworn  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
witness  
Kalends  
Kele  
The first day of the month  
To satisfy hunger or thirst  
Kenning  
Key-clog  
Knack  
A distance of twenty miles from shore  
A piece of wood tied to a key  
A small or trifling article  
Knapskal  
Ladypsalter  
Lance-knight  
A kind of helmet  
The rosary, usually the full 15 decades  
A mercenary soldier, often one who has  
deserted and is living by banditry.  
Landloper  
Lanthorn  
Lapped  
Latten  
A renegade or fugitive  
A lantern  
Wrapped, clothed  
Brass or bronze  
Praise  
Laud  
Lavatories  
Ceremonial washings which were part of a  
royal levée  
Laystall  
Lean  
A cesspit  
Lend  
Leasing  
Lection  
Leefen  
Leefull  
Leese  
Lying  
A reading  
Believe  
Lawful  
To surrender or be deprived of  
Leet  
A court held by the lord of a manor to try  
minor offences and disputes between  
tenants  
Leeue  
A leeue Lord = O Lord in whom we  
-51-  
VOLUME 14  
believe  
Lawful  
Lefull  
Legantine  
Legerdemain  
Leman  
Of or relating to a Papal legate  
Trickery  
A lover  
Leper  
Leaper  
Lesew, Lessewe  
Lesing  
Pasture  
(A) False (V) Lying  
Brittany  
Lesser Britain  
Let  
To hinder or prevent (also past tense and  
noun)  
Letter reverential  
A letter from a bishop recommending  
someone as fit for ordination or  
ecclesiastical office  
Leven  
Lewd  
Libard  
Libel  
Faith or confidence  
Ignorant or futile  
A leopard  
A document or certificate  
Lictor  
In Roman times, an official who attended a  
magistrate and carried out his orders to  
arrest, flog, execute etc. malefactors  
Lie for the whetstone  
To tell outrageous lies  
Lieger  
The holder of a feudal lordship or office  
Lieutenant-criminal  
A chief of police  
Livelihood  
Lie  
Lifelot  
Lig  
Like  
Likely  
Limbus  
Limbo, in Catholic theology a state  
without either the torments of Hell or the  
-52-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
bliss of Heaven, occupied by the souls of  
unbaptized children and virtuous pagans.  
Limiting  
Limitour  
List  
Begging  
A begging friar  
1. (N) A strip of cloth  
2
. (A) To want to do  
Little Britain  
Little Ease  
Brittany  
A prison cell too small to sit, stand or lie  
down in. Confinement in one was a form  
of torture.  
Livelode  
Lock  
Livelihood  
A handful of hay or straw; by extension a  
quantity of anything (OED); in modern  
Irish slang, a large quantity; which seems  
to be closer to the meaning here.  
Losel  
A low scoundrel  
Lotion  
Ritual washing  
Low Sunday  
Lucrified  
The Sunday after Easter  
Gained, profited  
Lust  
Powerful desire – not necessarily sexual  
Telling outrageous lies  
To mash or chop up  
A travelling-bag  
Lying for the whetstone  
Macerate  
Mail  
Mainprise, Mainprize  
1) A surety or guarantor  
2
) The act of bailing a prisoner  
Make-bait  
Makebate  
A trouble-maker  
A lie designed to stir up trouble for  
someone  
Malapert  
Mall  
Insolent  
A heavy hammer  
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VOLUME 14  
A state of doubt or perplexity  
Mammering  
Manchet  
Fine white bread  
Manducation  
Nourishment; usually spiritual, via the  
Eucharist  
Maniple  
1) A troop of soldiers  
2
) A strip of cloth worn hanging from the  
cuff  
Manqueller  
A murderer  
Gentleness  
Mansuetude  
Maozim, Mauzzim  
Hebrew name of a false god mentioned in  
Dan. xi 38.  
Maritage  
Mark  
A tax paid by a vassal to his lord on the  
marriage of his (i.e. the vassal's) daughter  
Silver, or unspecified: Thirteen shillings  
and fourpence in money  
Gold: Eight ounces  
Market-stead  
Marmoset  
Market-place  
A grotesque painting or statue  
nd  
Mary Magdalene's day  
Masses-trecenaries  
Maugre  
22 July  
Series of three hundred masses  
Despite  
Maumet, Mawmet  
Maundement  
Maundy  
An idol  
Commandment  
The Last Supper  
Idolatry  
Mawmetry, Maumetry  
Maze  
Confusion  
Mazed  
Crazy  
Meagred  
Starved  
Mecock  
An effeminate weakling  
-54-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Any valuable item or reward  
Meed  
Meet  
Suitable  
Meiny  
Household  
Mainz  
Mentz  
Merce  
To fine  
Mercement  
Mercery-ware  
A fine or imposition  
Fine cotton, velvet or silk goods; the stock-  
in-trade of a mercer  
Mere  
Pure, complete or unmixed  
Merrily  
Merilich  
Mess  
A group of people sitting together at a  
meal  
Mete  
Mete done = should do  
Imprisoning  
Mewing  
Mickle  
Millian  
Minever  
Great  
Milan, in Italy  
A kind of fur used for trimming or edging  
clothing  
Minish  
To diminish  
Ministratoriously  
Misallege  
In the capacity of an administrator.  
To distort the meaning of something in  
support of an argument  
Miser  
A wretch  
Misprision  
Under an Act of Parliament of 1534,  
misprision was the crime of refusing to  
swear an oath acknowledging the King as  
head of the church  
Misture  
Mo  
Loss  
More  
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VOLUME 14  
To admonish or warn  
Monish  
Monition  
Monitory  
Morrow-mass  
Mote  
Instruction, warning  
Containing a warning or admonishment  
A Mass said first thing in the morning  
1) May  
2
) Must  
Mowe, Mow  
Mulet  
May  
A young mule  
Mumpsimus  
A long-established but false belief, an old  
but mistaken custom (opposed to  
sumpsimus)  
Muniment  
A document proving ownership or  
entitlement to something  
Munition  
Murrain  
A fortification  
Cattle plague or other epidemic animal  
disease  
Murrey  
Mychel  
Namely  
Nard  
A purplish-red colour  
Great  
Especially  
An aromatic oil extracted from the  
spikenard plant (Nardostachys  
grandiflora)  
Nasturcium  
Watercress (the flower now called  
nasturtium was not known in England in  
Foxe's time)  
Naught  
Naverne  
Ne  
Wicked  
Navarre  
No, not, nor, neither  
A cow-herd  
Will not  
Neatherd  
Nele  
-56-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Neme  
Nene  
Nice  
To take  
Destruction  
1) Silly, foolish.  
2
) Council of Nice = Council of Nicæa  
(525 A.D)  
Nip  
Nipped a great number so near = squeezed  
many people so painfully  
Nocive  
Nole  
Harmful  
Will not  
Nonage  
Nones  
The period of childhood  
The 7th of March, May, July, or October;  
the 5th of any other month.  
Note  
A mark or characteristic  
Neither  
Nother  
Nousle  
Noyous  
Nursled  
Obits  
To train or educate  
Annoying, troublesome  
Nourished, brought up  
Masses for the dead  
Oblation  
Literally, an offering, which can signify:  
1
) An animal offered for sacrifice; the  
sacrifice itself  
2
3
) Money given to the church  
) One of two parts of the Mass; either the  
Offertory, or the presentation of the  
consecrated bread and wine with the words  
"
Behold the Lamb of God, etc"  
Oblocutor  
One who contradicts or abuses someone  
Obsignation  
Formal sealing or approval of a contract or  
other such document  
Obtestation  
Calling on God to witness that what you  
say is true  
-57-  
VOLUME 14  
Abuse, calumny  
Obtrectation  
Occurrent  
Happening  
Offendicle  
Something which leads or causes a person  
to commit sin  
Offension  
Onerate  
Injury or damage  
To lay an obligation on someone  
Onyx  
Onychinus  
Opprobry  
1) Infamy, shame  
2
) Insults  
Oppugn  
Orator  
To fight against  
A person who prays  
Ordinal  
Ordinary  
A book of rules and regulations  
The ecclesiastical chief of an area i.e. the  
parish priest in a parish, the bishop in a  
diocese, etc.; also , the bishop having  
authority over a particular priest.  
Ornature  
Personal adornment, fine clothing,  
jewellery etc.  
Ostent  
A wondrous event or miracle  
A gold or jewelled brooch or buckle  
Foreign  
Ouch  
Outlandish  
Out-scape  
Overthwart  
Oyster-board  
A way of escape  
Crosswise, either literally or figuratively  
A table or stall for selling oysters – used  
contemptuously for a communion table  
because it was the same shape  
Pack  
A scoundrel  
Packing  
Paction  
Fraudulent dealing  
An alliance  
-58-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Page  
Painful  
Pair  
A canton of Switzerland  
Painstaking  
To impair or harm  
A fence or fence-board  
A small horse  
Pale  
Palfrey  
Pall  
A kind of scarf or stole worn by a bishop;  
used figuratively to mean the office of  
bishop.  
Palsgrave  
A Count Palatine, i.e. a ruler who has been  
granted full powers in his fief by the Holy  
Roman Emperor  
Panim  
A pagan or other non-Christian  
Pantofle  
Expensive, highly decorated slippers;  
Stood upon their pantofles = Stood on their  
dignity  
Paralipomena  
Alternative name for the two books of  
Chronicles, in the Bible (in some editions,  
called the third & fourth books of Kings)  
Parcel  
A part  
Pardon-beads  
Rosary beads blessed so that those using  
them would have an indulgence  
Parochian  
Partlet  
A parish priest  
An article of clothing worn about the neck  
or upper chest; a bib or dickey.  
Paschal  
Pash  
Passover feast  
To smash  
Pasquil  
Patch  
A satire or lampoon  
1) A fool  
2
) A botch, shoddy work, distortion  
Patin, patine, paten  
A dish on which the communion bread is  
-59-  
VOLUME 14  
placed  
Pattens  
Paunch  
Pax  
Wooden overshoes  
To cut open the belly  
A small bas-relief of the crucifixion on a  
handle, kissed by the officiating priest and  
then the congregation at Mass  
Paynim  
A pagan or Muslim  
Pelagian  
One who holds the belief that it is possible  
to attain salvation entirely through one's  
own efforts, without the special grace of  
God.  
Pelf  
1) Worthless baubles  
2
) Contemptuous word for money,  
regarded as the source of all evil.  
To address with insults or reproaches  
1) A penitent  
Pelt  
Penitentiary  
2
) A priest specially appointed to hear  
confessions of reserved sins (very serious  
ones which cannot be absolved by ordinary  
priests)  
Penner  
A case for holding writing pens  
Perhaps  
Percase  
Perdurable  
Peregrine  
Perfitlich  
Perk  
Long-lasting  
A pilgrim  
Perfectly  
To behave presumptuously  
Unified  
Permixt  
Perpend  
Person  
To consider  
A parson  
Phylacteries  
Hypocritical displays of virtue  
-60-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Pictavia  
Pike  
Poitou, in France  
A toll barrier  
Pilch  
A coat made of animal skins or coarsely  
tanned leather  
Pill  
To rob, pillage  
Pilled  
Tonsured i.e. having the top of the head  
shaved  
Pinbank  
Pin-fold  
Pix  
The rack or similar instrument of torture  
A pound for stray animals  
A small box in which consecrated hosts are  
carried about.  
Plackard  
Plaice-mouth  
Plat  
An official document or proclamation  
A pursing of the lips  
A) A plough  
B) A plot of land  
Plenar  
Complete  
Plete  
To argue one's case  
Plumbat  
Plumps  
A lead ball on a cord  
A compact group of people  
A maker of laces for fastening clothes  
Laces for fastening clothes  
Weighing  
Point-maker  
Points  
Poising  
Poll  
To extort money from  
Shaving the top of the head  
The robes of a bishop or cardinal  
Polling  
Pontifical, Pontificalibus  
Popple  
The corn-cockle (Lychnis githago), a weed  
of wheat fields  
Porket  
A pig  
-61-  
VOLUME 14  
Appearance  
Port  
Porthose  
Portmen  
Portues  
Portuous  
To canonize as a saint  
Members of the town council  
A breviary or book of liturgy  
(Of a saint) Included in the standard  
breviary or calendar  
Position  
Post  
A question or proposal  
A post-rider i.e. a man who carried letters  
from one post station to the next  
Post alone  
Entirely alone  
Postcommon  
The postcommunion, a prayer of  
thanksgiving said near the end of the mass,  
after the communion  
Postil  
A note or comment on a document  
A ruler, potentate  
Potestate  
Pounced  
Of a metal object, decorated by embossing  
or engraving  
Practised  
Worked on  
Præmunire  
The crime in English law of appealing to,  
or acknowledging, a power outside  
England (usually the Papacy) in defiance  
of the monarch.  
Pravity  
Wickedness  
Prebend  
The revenue of a specific plot of land  
belonging to an ecclesiastical foundation; a  
prebendary was the priest to which a  
prebend was allocated or prebendated  
Prefe  
Proof  
Pregnancy  
Premonish  
Fullness  
To speak of beforehand, to warn  
-62-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Preparature  
Prepense  
Preparation  
Inclined towards  
A written command  
Prescript  
President  
An example to be followed  
Prest money  
Money given to a recruit on enlistment;  
"the King's shilling"  
Presul  
A prelate or bishop  
Pretended, falsely claimed  
To leave out, omit  
Proof  
Pretensed  
Pretermit  
Preue, preve  
Prick  
To shoot an arrow  
A tailor  
Prick-louse  
Prick-song  
Vocal music in more than one part or with  
an accompaniment  
Primer and accidence  
Priuilich  
The elements of reading and writing  
Privately  
Privation  
Deprivation, removal from office  
Privily  
Secretly  
1) Secret  
Privy  
2
) made privy of/unto something = told  
about it in confidence  
3
4
) privy chamber = private quarters  
) privy council = a committee of notables  
appointed by the King to advise him.  
5
) Lord privy seal = An officer of state  
whose formal duty is to keep and apply the  
King's seal to documents; he is usually a  
member of the cabinet or privy council  
Probably  
Probation  
Plausibly, convincingly  
Conclusive argument, proof  
-63-  
VOLUME 14  
To keep a problem = to discuss an  
Problem  
academic proposition  
Inclined towards  
Treachery  
Proclive  
Prodition  
Proem  
A prologue or introduction  
Profit  
Profect  
Professor  
One who proclaims his faith in the true  
religion  
Prolation  
A phrase or sentence spoken continuously,  
without a pause  
Prolix  
Long-winded  
Proll  
To prowl or rob  
1) a spokesman  
Prolocutor  
2
) The chairman of a parliament or  
congress  
Promoter  
Prompt  
An informer or unofficial prosecutor  
Prompt with = armed with, and very ready  
to use  
Prone  
Willing or inclined to do something.  
Special, particular  
Proper  
Propone  
To propose  
Proprietary  
Prorogations  
Prorogue  
Proscript  
Prosopopœia  
The holder of an ecclesiastical benefice  
Postponements  
To postpone  
Proscribed  
An orator's trick of speaking as if in the  
voice or person of someone else  
Proterve  
Stubborn, petulant  
Protonotary  
A senior papal clerk or envoy  
-64-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
The first or original version of a document  
Prototypon  
etc.  
Prove  
To test  
Provisor  
A person holding the right to be appointed  
to an office or benefice when it becomes  
vacant  
Provoke  
To invite  
Psalmograph  
Writer of Psalms; a title of King David of  
Israel and Judah  
Puissance  
Puissant  
Pung  
Power  
Powerful  
To peck  
Pursue  
To persecute  
Pursuivant  
Quadrant-place  
Quail  
A messenger or agent  
A quadrangle or courtyard  
To quell, suppress  
A cross-bow arrow  
To dispute or demur  
A court or commission of enquiry  
Quarrel  
Querell  
Quest  
Questionary  
At the University of Cambridge, an  
undergraduate in his final term  
Questmen  
Quick  
Members of a commission of enquiry  
Alive, living  
Quier  
A book  
Quindecim  
Quire  
A fifteenth part  
1) A choir  
2
) A book or document  
Quondam  
Former, formerly  
-65-  
VOLUME 14  
A Jewish Rabbi; used contemptuously to  
Rabbin  
Raca  
refer to other religious leaders  
An offensive word in Biblical times;  
"
Whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca,  
shall be in danger of the council:" (Matt. 5.  
2)  
2
Ranging-wise  
Rap  
At random  
To plunder or destroy  
A measure  
Rase  
Rashful  
Rash  
Rate, Ratle  
Readie  
To scold, abuse verbally  
Quick-witted and eloquent  
To rob  
Reave  
Receitor, Receptor  
Recluse  
A harbourer of criminals  
A prison cell  
Recordative  
Recule  
Commemorative  
To retreat  
Recure  
To restore to health  
Recusation  
An appeal based on the alleged partiality  
of a judge  
Recuse  
To reject someone's authority to do  
something  
Reed  
Advise  
Refel  
Disprove  
Refocillation  
Refract, Refractorious  
Refricate  
Revival, refreshment  
Stubborn  
To open up a wound  
To reject  
Refuse  
-66-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Rule  
Regiment  
Register  
Reiterate  
Relent  
A keeper of records, registrar.  
Repeat, repeated  
To return to one's original beliefs  
Replication, Replication  
duplic  
Stages in the arguing of a case before a  
court i.e.  
The prosecutor makes a charge, then  
The defendant makes a reply, then  
The prosecutor makes a replication, then  
The defendant makes a replication duplic  
Repugn  
Rescript  
To oppose, fight against  
Strictly, the decision of the Roman  
emperor on a case referred to him by a  
governor or judge; more loosely, any  
formal written command by a person in  
authority  
Residentiary  
Resperse  
The canons of a cathedral  
To accuse  
Respond  
A responsary, i.e. a hymn or prayer sung or  
spoken by a single voice and the choir or  
congregation in turn  
Retcheth  
Retract  
Reck, care themselves with  
A military retreat  
Revest  
To don vestments for a religious ceremony  
The vestry of a church  
The River Rhône  
Revestry  
Rhodanus  
Rochet  
A linen surplice  
Rocker  
A child's nurse, who rocks the cradle  
A crucifix  
Rode, Rood  
Rogation  
Chanting the litany of the saints during a  
procession  
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VOLUME 14  
A crucifix  
Rood  
Rood-loft  
A loft gallery above and behind a rood-  
screen  
Rood-screen  
A screen, usually richly decorated or  
carved, at the end of the nave of a church  
before the altar.  
Rood-sollor  
Room  
A rood-loft (qv).  
Place, position of authority  
Dig up with the snout, like a pig in filth  
Rooten  
Rounding  
Trimming the hair to the same length all  
the way around  
Rouse  
To rest or sleep  
Rown  
To whisper  
Royal  
An English gold coin, worth ten shillings  
A state of excitement or pride  
A fine-clothed but useless fellow  
Showing off  
Ruff  
Ruffler  
Ruffling  
Runagate  
Sabaoth  
A fugitive scoundrel or vagrant ruffian  
Lord of Sabaoth = Lord of Hosts, a title of  
God  
Sacramentals  
In Catholic practice, various things which  
resemble sacraments but are not one of the  
seven; as, the sign of the Cross; blessing of  
holy water etc.  
Sacramentary  
One who holds "heretical" (i.e. not  
Catholic) views on the Eucharist  
Sacring  
Sale  
The consecration of the Mass  
To assail  
Sarcenet  
Saturity  
A fine silk cloth  
Repletion  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
The Book of Psalms  
Sauter  
Say  
A fine cloth of silk and wool woven  
together  
Scathe  
Injury, damage  
Shall  
Schone  
Scurrier  
A soldier sent out to see what the enemy is  
doing, a scout  
Scutage  
Seam  
A tax paid instead of military service  
Eight bushels  
Searcher  
A minor customs official, who searches for  
contraband  
Sechen  
Seek  
Secluding  
Seggen  
Prohibiting  
Say  
Seigniory  
Lordship or dominion; or the lands over  
which this is held  
Sein  
Say  
Seised  
Of land or property: assigned or granted to  
someone  
Seizin-taking  
Taking possession of a token of ownership  
e.g. the keys of a house.  
Seker  
Certain  
Semblable Semblably  
Sententially  
Sententiary  
Similar, similarly  
As a judicial sentence  
A person who has compiled a compendium  
of theological opinions.  
Sepulture  
A tomb  
Sequestration  
Seraphical  
Confiscation of the income of a benefice  
Angel-like, a title specifically given to St.  
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VOLUME 14  
Bonaventure (1221-1274)  
Servage  
Several  
Severally  
Sewer  
Bondage, serfdom  
Separate or individual  
Separately or individually  
A servant who lays the table, serves the  
meal etc.  
Seyen  
See  
Shad  
Shed  
Share-Thursday  
Holy, or Maundy Thursday – the Thursday  
before Easter  
Shaveling  
Shawm  
A tonsured monk  
A musical instrument resembling an oboe.  
A cloth-shearer  
Shearman  
Sheave  
To collect, gather up  
Shelt-toad  
Shent  
A toad from the river Scheldt  
Ruined, destroyed  
Shere-Thursday  
Maundy or Holy Thursday, i.e. the  
Thursday before Easter  
Shew-bread  
Special loaves of bread which were placed  
on a table in the Temple of Jerusalem  
every Sabbath and eaten by the priests at  
the end of the week. See Exod. xxv. 30.  
Shifter  
Shog  
An idle worthless fellow  
To shake vigorously  
Shoes  
Shone  
Shrewd  
Shrift  
False and malicious  
Absolution  
Shriuing  
Confession  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
The Sunday seven weeks before Easter  
Shrove Sunday  
Shullen  
Shulne  
Shall  
Shall  
Sideman  
Siege  
An assistant churchwarden  
Seat  
Silly  
Innocent  
Sink  
A sewer or drain  
Sith  
Since  
Sith that  
Sithe  
Provided that  
Times  
Sithen  
So that  
Sithence  
Skill  
Since  
To be of importance  
Encouraging others to sin by bad example  
An executioner  
Slay  
Slander-giving  
Slaughter-slave  
Sle  
Slean  
Slay  
Sleight, sleighty  
Slipper-dealing  
Slops  
Deceitful  
Deceitful practices  
Baggy trousers  
Smeared with dirt  
Slain  
Slorried  
Slowen  
Smaragd  
Smit  
An emerald  
Struck  
Snaffle  
A kind of horse-bridle  
A horse bridle  
Snaffle  
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VOLUME 14  
To jeer at, nag, abuse  
Snag  
Snarled  
Snuff  
Strangled, or tortured with a twisted rope  
To take snuff = to take offence  
Boiled  
Sod, Sodden  
Soke  
The area within which a particular court or  
grand jury had authority  
Soldan  
Sultan  
Soldier-fare  
Solicitor  
Military service  
An agent or deputy  
An answer or explanation  
Solution  
Somoner, Somnor  
A bailiff of an ecclesiastical court, who  
summons people to attend  
Sooth-deacon  
A formally appointed deputy or  
representative  
Soothfastness  
Sop  
Constancy in holding to the truth  
A piece of bread dipped in wine or other  
liquid  
Sophistry  
False or dishonest arguments  
Sorbonical  
After the fashion of the Sorbonne, or  
University of Paris  
Souter  
Spar  
A cobbler or shoemaker  
To bolt down, fasten tightly  
Spread  
Sparsed  
Specialty  
Speed  
A particular point of argument  
To succeed  
Spinster  
A woman whose occupation was spinning  
thread  
Spiritualty  
The clergy or hierarchy  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
The elbow-piece in a suit of armour  
Splent  
Spouse-breach  
Spoushod  
Springall  
Spur-gall  
Spurging  
Spurn  
Adultery  
Marriage  
A young man  
To injure a horse by excessive use of spurs  
Oozing of matter, fæces etc. from the body  
Kick or trample underfoot  
th  
St. James's tide  
Staple  
25 July  
A, or the only, legally licensed market for  
wool for purchase by foreigners  
Starting-hole  
Literally, a hole in which a hunted animal  
can hide; metaphorically, a loophole, or  
"
get-out"  
Stellify  
Sternship  
Stied  
To place among the stars  
Haughtiness  
Went (the word is principally used to  
describe Christ's ascension into heaven)  
Stiver  
A Dutch coin, worth about one English  
penny  
Stocks  
The name of a market for meat and fish in  
the City of London  
Stover  
Fodder, animal food  
Strict, rigorous, narrow, closely confined.  
A whore  
Strait  
Strumpet  
Sturdy  
Obstinate  
Suffice  
Suffragan  
Suffrage  
To serve  
An assistant or subordinate bishop  
1) An assistant  
2
) Help, assistance of any kind  
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VOLUME 14  
Sugge  
Sugget  
Suit  
To say  
A saying  
Requirement  
Sumner  
A bailiff of an ecclesiastical court, who  
summons people to attend  
Sum-papal  
Sumpsimus  
A summary of papal edicts on a particular  
topic  
A new but correct belief or custom  
(opposed to mumpsimus)  
Sumpter  
A pack-horse  
Super-altar  
A slab of stone consecrated for use as an  
altar when placed on a table etc.  
Superaltare  
The ritual of profession as a Benedictine  
monk  
Supererogation  
In works of supererogation: in Catholic  
theology, the performance of good works  
beyond what God commands or requires;  
this builds up a store of grace which the  
Church can dispense in the form of  
indulgences etc.  
Supple  
To soften  
Supposition  
Supputation  
Surname  
An argument for a proposition  
A system of calculation  
A nickname  
Sustentation  
Provision of food, drink and other  
necessities  
Sweat  
A disease marked by high fever and  
copious sweating  
Sweuen  
Swill  
A false vision or fake miracle  
Liquid filth  
Swinge  
Power or authority; in phrase To bear the  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
swinge = to have power or authority  
Swingel of a flail  
A flail was an implement for threshing  
corn, consisting of a long handle or staff  
and a shorter stick, the swingle, loosely  
tied to the end of the staff so it could swing  
freely. The thresher held the flail by the  
staff and beat the sheaves of corn with the  
swingle to dislodge the grains from the  
straw.  
Synagogue  
Synecdoche  
A church or abbey notorious for corrupt  
practices or false doctrines, blasphemy  
etc.; An assembly of false religion or  
blasphemy  
A figure of speech where the part is taken  
for the whole, or vice versa  
Tabret  
A small drum  
Tallage  
An arbitrary tax levied by special order  
Tally for his own cates  
To obtain food and other necessities on  
credit  
Tarriance  
Teende  
Delay  
Attend with  
Temerarious  
Temporalty  
Tender  
Rash, reckless  
The laity  
To treat with tenderness or affection  
To clean a wound with a small roll of cloth  
Tithes  
Tent  
Tenths  
Tergiversation  
Changing sides; denying what one has  
previously asserted or vice versa  
Term probatory  
Terrene  
A period of time given to a litigant to  
prepare his case  
Of the earth in the sense (1) as opposed to  
heavenly or (2) peasant-like, low-class  
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VOLUME 14  
A fever recurring every third day  
Tertian  
The land of behest  
Thicker  
The Promised Land  
A fuller, i.e. a person whose occupation is  
the cleaning and preparation of newly-  
woven cloth  
Thilke  
Tho  
This  
Then  
Thoore  
Thrall  
Unharmed  
A slave  
Thrasonical  
Boastful [like Thraso, a character in the  
play Eunuchus by the Roman playwright  
Terence]  
Threnes of Jeremy  
The book of Lamentations, in the Old  
Testament  
Thurify  
Tickle  
To bless with incense  
Unstable, ready to fall at a touch ;  
Credulous, easily persuaded  
Tied his points  
Tippet  
Fastened his laces  
A hood or hooded cloak  
A court usher or bailiff  
Tipstaff , Tipstave  
Tithed to death  
Titiviller  
Decimated (i.e. every tenth man killed)  
The name of a demon in a morality play;  
hence, a scoundrel  
Tituled  
Named  
To lie for the whetstone  
To-brast  
To tell outrageous lies  
Completely destroy  
Destroyed, torn up  
In front of  
To-broken  
Tofore  
Tollage  
Money paid in tolls or taxes  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
The name of the town prison in Cambridge  
Toll-booth  
and Edinburgh  
Tonsure  
Tose  
A shaven patch on the top of the head  
To card wool  
Totquots  
A papal dispensation allowing the holder  
to have any number of benefices  
Towardness  
Toy  
Exceptional aptitude.  
A trifle or bauble, a whimsy  
Written discussion or discourse  
Tractation  
Trade  
A way of life, moral attitude towards  
living  
Train  
A deception or fraud  
Transumpt  
(N) A transcript or formal copy of a record  
or decree  
(V) To copy, transfer or transform  
Trauel  
Labour  
Travail  
1) Labour  
2
) Suffering  
Travell  
Suffering  
Traverse, Travise  
Treen shoes  
Trencher  
Trental  
A dispute or controversy  
Wooden shoes, clogs  
A wooden dish  
A series of thirty requiem masses  
Well-chosen to deceive  
A wax taper rolled into a coil  
A figure of speech  
Metaphorical  
Trim-couched  
Trindles  
Trope  
Tropical  
Trought  
Truth  
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VOLUME 14  
To believe  
Trow  
Tucker  
Tuition  
Tunably  
Tunned  
Tympany  
A cloth-fuller or finisher  
Protection, guardianship  
Harmoniously  
Got drunk with  
A swelling of the abdomen caused by gas  
in the intestines or stomach.  
Uiker, Uicar  
Vicar, in the sense of appointed  
representative  
Unconning  
Unlefull  
Foolish  
Unlawful  
Unmeet  
Unsuitable  
Foolish, stupid  
Disrespected  
Unwitty  
Unworshipped  
Usance  
Lending or borrowing at (usually usurious)  
interest  
Utas  
The eighth day after the specified feast day  
Vail  
An extra payment or profit, a perk  
Advantage  
Vantage  
Vastation  
Vaumure  
Vaward  
Verament  
Verilich  
Very  
Devastation, destruction  
An outer fortification  
The vanguard  
Truly  
Truly  
True, truly; pure  
Voyage  
Viage  
Vicegerent  
A person appointed by the king with full  
authority to act on his behalf  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
A layman who acted for a bishop in legal  
Vidame  
and business matters  
Vie crowns  
Vilipend  
A gambling game by tossing coins for  
double or quits  
To regard, or treat, a person as being vile  
or worthless  
Vility  
Vileness  
Vineat  
An ornamental border of vine leaves in a  
manuscript  
Visor  
A mask or outward show  
To spoil or wear out  
A spoken word  
Vitiate  
Vocable  
Void  
To depart from  
Waits  
The members of a municipal band,  
employed by the city to play on public  
occasions  
Walisch  
Wan hope  
Wanyand  
Ward  
Welsh  
Despair  
An imprecation or curse  
A lock; prison  
Warren  
An area of land enclosed for breeding  
game animals or birds.  
Wast  
Year, day and wast = "a prerogative  
whereby the sovereign was entitled to the  
profits for a year and a day of a tenement  
held by a person attainted of petty treason  
or felony, with the right of wasting the  
tenement" (OED)  
Waster  
A wooden sword used for fencing practice  
Pale blue stockings  
Watchet-hose  
Waxen  
Grown up  
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VOLUME 14  
The throat  
Weasand  
Web  
A piece of woven cloth, as it comes from  
the loom  
Weed  
A cloak or costume  
Suppose, believe  
To know  
Ween  
Weet  
Wele  
Prosperity  
Wete, weten  
1) to know  
2
) to ask of someone  
Wheeler  
A wheel-maker  
Through which  
A whirlpool  
Where-through  
Whirlpit  
Whist  
To whisper  
Whittled  
Drunk  
Wild he, nild he  
Will-works  
Whether he wanted or not  
Works performed by the human will,  
without divine grace  
Will-worship  
Worship of God in a form or way not  
authorised by Him (i.e. different from  
those of the speaker)  
Wimble  
Wis  
An auger or gimlet  
1) To know  
2
) To declare  
Wist  
Knew  
Wit  
To know  
Witty  
Sensible, intelligent  
Would  
Wolden  
Wonnyer, Wonnier  
Inhabitant  
-80-  
FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
A short sword or large knife, used by  
Wood-knife  
huntsmen for disembowelling and cutting  
up game  
Woodness  
Woolward  
Madness, violent anger  
To go woolward = to wear coarse woollen  
cloth next the skin, as a penance or  
punishment  
Wot  
Know  
Wracke  
Wrakers  
Wreke  
Revenge  
Those who wreak vengeance  
To work, do something  
Writhe  
Wyllingly  
Ybeden  
Ybore  
To distort  
Thankfully  
Bade  
Born  
Ych  
I
Year-mind  
A Mass said on the anniversary of  
someone's death  
Yeve  
To give  
Yift  
A gift  
Ylich  
Younker  
You-ward  
Yuill  
Equally  
A young gentleman  
Towards you  
Evil  
Ywit  
Know  
Zif  
Thus; or as phrase zif all = although  
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VOLUME 14  
Life Of John Fox  
(From The Dictionary of National Biography, 1885)  
FOXE, JOHN (1516-1587), martyrologist, was born at Boston, Lincolnshire,  
in 1516. The date is supplied by a grant of arms made to his family on 21 Dec. 1598  
(MAITLAND, Notes, pt. i. 8-10). He is there said to be lineally connected with  
Richard Foxe, bishop of Winchester, but this relationship is improbable. The father, of  
whom nothing is known, died while his sons were very young. Foxe had at least one  
brother. The mother married a second husband, Richard Melton, to whom Foxe  
dedicated an early work, 'An Instruccyon of .Christen Fayth,' with every mark of  
affection. He was a studious youth, and attracted the notice of one Randall, a citizen  
of Coventry, and of John Harding or Hawarden, fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford.  
His stepfather's means were small, and these friends sent him to Oxford about 1532,  
when he was sixteen years old. According to the untrustworthy biography of 1641,  
attributed to Foxe's son Samuel, Foxe entered at Brasenose College, where his patron  
Hawarden was tutor. He is not mentioned in the college books. It must, however, be  
admitted that Foxe, when dedicating his 'Syllogisticon' (1563) to Hawarden, writes of  
him as if he had been his tutor; and that Alexander No well, afterwards dean of St.  
Paul's (stated in the biography of 1641 to have been Foxe's chamber-fellow at  
Oxford), was a member of Brasenose, and was one of Foxe's lifelong friends. Foxe  
also refers to Brasenose thrice in his 'Actes and Monuments,' but the absence of any  
comment indicating personal association with the place does not give this  
circumstance any weight. If he resided at Brasenose at all, it was probably for a brief  
period as Hawarden's private pupil. He must undoubtedly have attended Magdalen  
College School at the same time. A close connection with both Magdalen School and  
College is beyond question. The matriculation register for the years during which  
Foxe would have been 'in statu pupillari 'is unfortunately lost. But he became  
probationer fellow of Magdalen in July 1538, and full fellow 25 July 1539, being joint  
lecturer in logic with Baldwin Norton in 15391540, and proceeding B.A. 17 July 1537  
and M.A.inJuly l543 (Oxf. Univ. Reg., Oxf. Hist. Soc., i. 188). Foxe repeatedly  
identifies himself with Magdalen in his works and private letters. 'For which  
foundation,' he writes in the 'Actes,' iii. 716, 'as there have been and be yet many  
students bound to yield grateful thanks unto God, so I must needs confess to be one,  
except I will be unkind.' About 1564, when one West (formerly of Magdalen) was  
charged in the court of high commission with making rebellious speeches, Foxe used  
his influence to procure the offender's pardon, on the sole ground that he had  
belonged to the same school and college at Oxford as himself. As fellow of Magdalen  
Foxe had his difficulties. His intimate friends and correspondents at Oxford included,  
besides Nowell, Richard Bertie, John Cheke of Cambridge, Hugh Latimer, and  
William Tindal, and like them he strongly favoured extreme forms of protestantism.  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
His colleagues at Magdalen were divided on doctrinal questions, and the majority  
inclined to the old forms of religious belief. He was bound by the statutes to attend the  
college chapel with regularity, and to proceed to holy orders within seven years of his  
election to his fellowship. He declined to conform to either rule. Complaint was made  
to the president, Dr. Owen Oglethorp, and Foxe defended himself in a long letter  
(
Lansd. MS. 388). He expressly objected to the enforcement of celibacy on the  
fellows. Finally, in July 1545, he and five of his colleagues resigned their fellowships.  
There was no expulsion, as Foxe's biographer of 1641 and most of his successors have  
asserted. The college register records that 'ex honesta causa recesserunt sponte a  
collegio,' and Foxe's future references to his college prove that he bore it no ill-will.  
Before leaving Oxford, Foxe mentioned in a letter to Tindal that he had  
derived much satisfaction from a visit to the Lucy family at Charlecote,  
Warwickshire. Thither he now directed his steps. William Lucy seems to have given  
him temporary employment as tutor to his son Thomas. On 3 Feb. 1546-7 Foxe  
married, at Charlecote Church, Agnes Randall, daughter of his old friend of Coventry,  
a lady who seems to have been in the service of the Lucys. He thereupon came up to  
London to seek a livelihood. The biographer of 1641 draws a dreary picture of his  
disappointments and destitution, and relates how an unknown and anonymous  
benefactor put a purse of gold into his hand, while in a half-dying condition in St.  
Paul's Cathedral, and how he received soon afterwards an invitation to visit Mary  
Fitzroy, duchess of Richmond, at her residence, Mountjoy House, Knight rider Street.  
The latter statement is well founded. It is undoubted that Foxe and his friend Bale,  
whose acquaintance he first made at Oxford, were both, early in 1548, entertained by  
the duchess, who was at one with them on religious questions (Actes, iii. 705).  
Through the joint recommendation of his hostess and of Bale, Foxe was moreover  
appointed before the end of the year tutor to the orphan children of Henry Howard,  
earl of Surrey, who had been executed 19 Jan. 1546-7. The duchess was the earl's  
sister, and Bale was intimate with Lord Wentworth, who had been the children's  
guardian since their father's death. There were two boys, Thomas, afterwards duke of  
Norfolk (b. 1536), and Henry Howard, afterwards earl of Northampton (b. 1539),  
together with three girls. Foxe joined his pupils at the castle of Reigate, a manor  
belonging to their grandfather, the Duke of Norfolk. He remained there for five years.  
In that interval Foxe published his earliest theological tracts. All advocated  
advanced reforming views. Their titles are: 'De non plectendis morte adulteris  
consultatio Ioannis Foxi,' London, per Hugonem Syngletonum, 1548, dedicated to  
Thomas Picton; 'A Sarmon of Jhon Oecolampadius to Yong Men and Maydens,'  
dedicated to 'Master Segrave,' London? 1550?; 'An Instruccyon of Christen Fayth,'  
London, Hugh Syngleton, 1550? dedicated to Melton, his stepfather, a translation  
from Urbanus Regius; and 'De Censura, sive Excommunicatione Ecclesiastica,  
Interpellatio ad archiepiscopum Cantabr.,' London, Stephen Mierdmannus, 1551. The  
first work was reissued in 1549 under the new title 'De lapsis in Ecclesiam recipiendis  
consultatio,' with a 'Præfaciuncula ad lectorem 'substituted for the dedication to Picton  
-83-  
VOLUME 14  
(MAITLAN D, Early Hooks in Lambeth Library, pp. 223-4). Furthermore, he  
prepared a school book, 'Tables of Grammar,' London, 1552. According to Wood,  
eight lords of the privy council subscribed to print this work, but its brevity  
disappointed its patrons. Meanwhile Foxe was reading much in church history with a  
view to an elaborate defence of the protestant position. On 24 June 1550 he was  
ordained deacon by Ridley, bishop of London, in St. Paul's Cathedral. He stayed for  
the purpose in Barbican, at the house of the Duchess dowager of Suffolk, who became  
the wife of; his friend, Richard Bertie.. Subsequently he preached as a volunteer at  
Reigate, being the first to preach protestantism there.  
The accession of Mary in July 1553 proved of serious import to Foxe. One of  
the queen's I earliest acts was to release from prison the old Duke of Norfolk (d.  
1
554), the grandfather of Foxe's pupils. The duke was a catholic, and promptly  
dismissed Foxe from his tutorship. It is probable that Foxe thereupon took up his  
residence at Stepney, whence he dates the dedication of 'A Fruitfull Sermon of the  
moost Euangelicall wryter, M. Luther, made of the Angelles '(London, by Hugh  
Syngleton, 1554?). The elder lad, Thomas, had formed a strong affection for his  
teacher, and when he was sent from Reigate to be under the care of Bishop Gardiner  
at Winchester House, he contrived that Foxe should pay him secret visits. Foxe was  
soon alarmed by the obvious signs of a catholic revival. A rumour that parliament was  
about to re-enact the six articles of 1539 drew from him a well-written Latin petition  
denouncing any change in the religious establishment. It is reported by the biographer  
of 1641 that early in 1554 Foxe was visiting his pupil at Gardiner's house, when the  
bishop entered the room, and was told that Foxe was the lad's physician. Gardiner  
paid Foxe an equivocal compliment, which raised his suspicions. The majority of his  
friends had already left England for the continent at the first outbreak of persecution,  
and he determined to follow them. With his wife, who was expecting her  
confinement, he hurried to Ipswich, and arrived at Nieuport after a very stormy  
passage. He travelled to Strasburg by easy stages, and met his friend Edmund Grindal  
there in July. He had brought with him in manuscript the first part of a Latin treatise  
on the persecutions of reformers in Europe from the time of Wycliffe to his own day.  
A Strasburg printer, Wendelin Richelius, hurriedly put it into type in time for the great  
Frankfort fair. The volume, a small octavo of 212 leaves, is now of great rarity. It  
forms the earliest draft of the 'Actes and Monuments;' but only comes down to 1500,  
and deals mainly with the lives of Wycliffe and Huss. Some notes of Bishop Pecock  
are added, together with an address to the university of Oxford, deploring the recent  
revival there of the doctrine of transubstantiation. The dedication, dated from  
Strasburg 3l Aug. 1554, was addressed to Christopher, duke of Würtemberg, and is  
said to have displeased the duke, a well-known patron of protestants. The title usually  
runs: 'Commentarii rerum in ecclesia gestarum maximarumque per totam Europam  
persecutionum a Vuicleui temporibus ad hanc usque ætatem descriptio. Liber primus.  
.
. . Anno MDLIIII.' But copies are met with with a title-page beginning 'Chronicon  
Ecclesiæ continens historiam rerum,' &c., where the date is given as MDLXIIII, and  
the printer's name as Josias instead of Wendelinus Richelius. Dr. Maitland suggested  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
that this date was an error due to the hasty production, but it seems more probable that  
the second title belongs to a later reprint.  
By the end of 1554 Foxe had joined the protestant refugees at Frankfort, and  
was lodging with a well-known puritan, Anthony Gilby. Foxe found a heated  
controversy as to forms of worship raging among his countrymen at Frankfort. Some  
wished to adhere to Edward VI's second prayer-book, others desired a severer liturgy,  
and denounced the surplice and viva-voce responses. The civic authorities had  
meanwhile directed the adoption of the service-book of the French protestants.  
Various modifications were suggested, but all failed to pacify the contending factions.  
Knox had lately been summoned from Geneva by a portion of the English at Frankfort  
to act as their minister. He proposed that the dispute should be referred to Calvin.  
Foxe, who at once took a prominent place among Knox's supporters, encouraged this  
course. Calvin recommended a compromise between the Anglican and Genevan  
forms of prayer. Foxe offered, in conjunction with Knox and others, to give the  
suggestion practical effect. The offer was rejected, but a temporary settlement was  
effected by Knox without Foxe's aid. In the middle of 1555 the quarrel broke out  
anew. Dr. Richard Cox reached Frankfort, and at once headed the party in favour of  
an undiluted anglican ritual. Knox attacked Cox from his pulpit. But Cox and his  
friends had influence with the civic authorities; serious charges were brought against  
Knox, and he was directed to quit the town. The controversy was not ended. Foxe  
suggested arbitration, but he was overruled. On 1 Sept. 1555 he and Whittingham,  
now the leaders of the Genevan party, announced their intention of abandoning  
Frankfort. They gave Knox's expulsion as their chief reason for this step.  
Whittingham straightway left for Geneva. Foxe remained behind, reluctant to part  
with Nowell and other friends. As a final attempt at reconciling the rival parties he  
wrote (12 Oct.) entreating Peter Martyr, whom he had met at Strasburg, to come and  
lecture on divinity to the English at Frankfort. Despite the controversy, he spoke of  
the kind reception with which he had met there. But Martyr declined the invitation,  
and in the middle of November Foxe removed to Basle. Foxe suffered acutely from  
poverty while at Basle. He wrote to Grindal soon after his arrival that he was reduced  
to his last penny, and was thankful for a gift of two crowns. He begged his pupil, now  
Duke of Norfolk, and his new patron, the Duke of Würtemberg, to help him. But his  
destitution did not blunt his energies. He found employment as a reader of the press in  
the printing office of Johann Herbst or Oporinus, an enthusiastic protestant and  
publisher of protestant books. Foxe was henceforth closely connected with the trade  
of printing. According to the 'Stationers' Register '(ed. Arber, i. 33), one John Foxe  
took up the freedom of the Stationers' Company on 5 March 1554-5, and paid 3s. 4d.  
for his breakfast on the occasion. His intimate association in later years with the  
London printer, John Day (1522-1584), makes it almost certain that this entry refers  
to the martyrologist. Oporinus and Foxe lived on the best of terms; they corresponded  
after Foxe had left the continent, and Oporinus allowed Foxe, while in his employ,  
adequate leisure for his own books. Before leaving Frankfort he had begun to translate  
into Latin Cranmer's treatise on the Eucharist in answer to Gardiner (London, 1551).  
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VOLUME 14  
He found the task difficult. Grindal and others begged him to persevere. "When he  
heard of Cranmer's death in 1556 he at once negotiated with Christopher Froschover  
of Zurich for its publication, but the negotiation dragged on till 1559, and the work,  
although partly utilised by Foxe elsewhere, still remains in manuscript (Harleian MS.  
4
18). In 1556 Oporinus published Foxe's 'Christus Triumphans,' an apocalyptic drama  
after German models, in five acts of Latin verse, concluding with a 'panegyricon 'on  
Christ in Latin prose. The original manuscript is in Lansdowne MS. 1073. Tanner  
says that an edition was issued in London in 1551, a statement of doubtful authority.  
The work is a crude and tedious mystery play, but achieved such success as to be  
published in a French translation by Jean Bienvenu at Geneva in 1562, a form in  
which it is now of the utmost rarity. An English translation by Richard Day appeared  
in 1578, 1599, and 1607, and reprints of the original, prepared by Thomas Comber for  
use in schools, 'ob insignem styli elegantiam'-- an undeserved compliment -- are dated  
1
672 and 1677 (cf. HERFORD, Studies in the Lit. Relations of England and  
Germany, pp. 138-48). After Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer had fallen at the stake,  
Foxe drew up an admirable expostulation and plea for toleration, addressed to the  
nobility of England (8 Feb. 1555-6). It was first printed by Oporinus at Basle in 1557  
tinder the title 'Ad inclytos ac præpotentes Angliæ proceres . . . supplicatio. Autore  
Ioanne Foxo Anglo.' In the same year he brought out an ingenious series of rules for  
aiding the memory, entitled 'Locorum communium logicalium tituli et ordines 150, ad  
seriem prædicamentorum decem descripti,' Basle, which was reissued in London as  
'Pandectæ locorum communium' in 1585. In 1557 and 1558 Foxe remonstrated in a  
friendly way with Knox on account of the strong language used in 'The First Blast of  
the Trumpet; 'and on Elizabeth's accession he wrote a congratulatory address, which  
Oporinus printed. Meanwhile Foxe was receiving through Grindal reports of the  
protestant persecutions in England. Bradford's case was one of the earliest he  
received. When reports of Cranmer's examinations arrived Foxe prepared them for  
publication, and Grindal seems to have proposed that these and the reports of  
proceedings against other martyrs should be issued separately in two forms, one in  
Latin and the other in English. Foxe was to be responsible for the Latin form. The  
English form was to be prepared and distributed in England. Only in the case of the  
story of Philpot's martyrdom was this plan carried out. Strype preserves the title of  
Foxe's pamphlet, printed at Basle, detailing Philpot's sufferings 'Mira et elegans cum  
primis historia vel tragœdia potius de tota ratione examinationis et condemnationis  
J.Philpotti . . . nunc in Latinum versa, interprete J. F.,' but no copy is now known. On  
1
0 June 1557 Grindal urged Fox to complete at once his account of the persecution of  
reformers in England as far as the end of Henry VIII's reign (GRINDAL, Remaines,  
Parker Soc., p. 223 et seq.) He worked steadily, and in 1559 had brought his story of  
persecution down to nearly the end of Mary's reign. Nicolaus Brylinger with Oporinus  
sent the work, which was all in Latin, to press, and it appeared in folio under the title  
'Rerum in ecclesia gestarum, quae postremis et periculosis his temporibus evenerunt,  
maximarumque per Europam Persecutionum ac Sanctorum Dei Martyrum si quae  
insignioris exempli sunt, digesti per Regna et Nationes commentarii. Pars prima, in  
qua primum de rebus per Angliam et Scotiam gestis atque in primis de horrenda sub  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
Maria nuper regina persecutione narratio continetur. Autore Joanne Foxo, Anglo.' A  
second part, giving the history of the persecutions of the reformers on the continent,  
was announced to follow, but Foxe abandoned it, and that part of the work was  
undertaken by Henry Pantaleone of Zurich. This great volume of 732 numbered pages  
is in six books, of which the first embodies the little volume of 'Commentarii.' The  
expostulation addressed to the nobility is reprinted (pp. 239-61). Bishop Hooper's  
treatise on the Eucharist, forwarded to Bullinger, and written while in prison, appears  
with dissertations on the same subject by Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer. The whole  
was dedicated to Foxe's pupil, the Duke of Norfolk (1 Sept. 1559). At the same time  
as the book was issued the pope (Paul IV) announced that he had prohibited Oporinus  
from publishing any further books.  
Foxe left for England in October, a month after his great book had been  
published. He wrote announcing his arrival to the Duke of Norfolk, who offered him  
lodgings in his house at Christchurch, Aldgate, and afterwards invited him to one of  
his country houses. On 25 Jan. 1559-60 Grindal, now" bishop of London, ordained  
him priest, and in September 1560 Parkhurst, another friend, who had just become  
bishop of Norwich, promised to use his influence to obtain a prebendal stall at  
Norwich for him. Foxe is often represented as having lived for some time with  
Parkhurst, and as having 1 preached in his diocese. The bishop invited him to  
Norwich (29 Jan. 1563-4), but there is no evidence of an earlier visit. From the  
autumn of 1561 Foxe was chiefly engaged in translating his latest volume into  
English and in elaborating its information. The papers of Ralph Morice, Cranmer's  
secretary, had fallen into his hands, together with much new and, as Foxe believed,  
authentic material. Most of his time was clearly spent in London at the Duke of  
Norfolk's house in Aldgate, but every Monday he worked at the printing-office of  
John Day in Aldersgate Street, who had undertaken the publication.  
In 1564, after the death of the Duchess of Norfolk, Foxe removed from the  
duke's house to Day's house in Aldersgate Street, and took a prominent part in Day's  
business. He petitioned Cecil (6 July 1568) to relax in Day's behalf the law  
prohibiting a printer from employing more than four foreign workmen. Day's close  
connection with Foxe's great undertaking is commemorated in the lines on Day's  
tombstone in the church of Little Bradley, Suffolk:  
He set a Fox to wright how martyrs runne  
By death to lyfe: Fox ventured paynes and health  
To give them light: Daye spent in print his wealth.  
(Notes and Queries, 6th ser. yiii. 246.)  
But Foxe's stay in Day's house was probably only temporary. In 1565 he spent  
some time at Waltham. The register states that two of his children, Rafe and Mary,  
were baptised there on 29 Jan. 1565-6. Fuller in 'The Infant's Advocate,' 1653, not  
only credits Waltham with being Foxe's home when he was preparing 'his large and  
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VOLUME 14  
learned works,' but says that he left his posterity a considerable estate in the parish.  
The biographer of 1641 writes that Foxe was on very good terms with Anne, the wife  
of Sir Thomas Heneage, who was a large landowner in the neighbourhood of  
Waltham. On 24 July 1749 the antiquary Dr. Stukeley made a pilgrimage to the house  
associated with Foxe at Waltham, and it then seems to have been a popular show-  
place (Memoirs, ii. 211). About 1570 Foxe removed to Grub Street, where he  
probably lived till his death.  
On 20 March 1562-3 Foxe's 'Actes and Monuments' issued from Day's press,  
on the very same day as Oporinus published at Basle the second part of the Latin  
original containing Pantaleone's account of the persecutions on the continent. The title  
of the 'Actes and Monuments' seems to have been borrowed from a book called  
'Actiones et Monimenta Martyrum,' printed by Jean Crespin at Geneva in 1560.  
Grindal had written of Foxe's projected work as 'Historia Martyrum,' 19 Dec. 1558.  
From the date of its publication it was popularly known as the 'Book of Martyrs,' and  
even in official documents as 'Monumenta Martyrum.' The first edition has four  
dedicatory epistles: to Jesus Christ, the queen, ad doctum lectorem (alone in Latin),  
and to the persecutors of God's truth. A preface 'on the utility of the story' is a  
translation from the Basle volume of 1559. Foxe forwarded a copy to Magdalen  
College, with a letter explaining that the work was written in English 'for the good of  
the country and the information of the multitude,' and received in payment 6l. 13s. 4d.  
The success of the undertaking was immediate, and at the suggestion of Jewell,  
bishop of Salisbury, the author received his first reward in the shape of a prebend in  
Salisbury Cathedral, together with the lease of the vicarage of Shipton (11 May 1563).  
Before the year was out he had brought out an elaborate treatise on the Eucharist,  
entitled 'Syllogisticon,' with a dedication to his old friend Hawarden, now principal of  
Brasenose, and in 1564 he published a Latin translation of Grindal's funeral sermon in  
memory of the Emperor Ferdinand I. But he also spent much time in helping the  
plague-stricken, and made a powerful appeal to the citizens for help for the afflicted  
(1564). His poverty did not cease. His clothes were still shabby; the pension which the  
Duke of Norfolk gave him was very small, and when he bestowed the vicarage of  
Shipton on William Master he appealed to the queen (August 1564) to remit the  
payment of first-fruits, on the ground that neither of them had a farthing. He also  
informed her, in very complimentary terms, that he contemplated writing her life. At  
Salisbury he declined to conform or to attend to his duties regularly. He had  
conscientious objections to the surplice. He was absent from Jewell's visitation in  
June 1568, and in the following December was declared contumacious on refusing to  
devote a tithe of his income to the repair of the cathedral. On the Good Friday after  
the publication of the papal bull excommunicating the queen (1570), Foxe, at  
Grindal's bidding, preached a powerful sermon at St. Paul's Cross, and renewed his  
attacks on the catholics. The sermon, entitled 'A Sermon of Christ Crucified,' was  
published by Day immediately, with a prayer and 'a postscript to the papists,' and was  
reissued, 'newly recognised by the authour,' in 1575, 1577, and 1585. A very rare  
edition was printed for the Stationers' Company in 1609. On 1 Oct. 1571 Foxe  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
translated it into Latin, and Day issued it under the title 'De Christo Crucifixo Concio.'  
In this shape it was published at Frankfort in 1575.  
Foxe's correspondence was rapidly increasing, and his position in  
ecclesiastical circles grew influential. Parkhurst (29 Jan. 1563-4) solicited his aid in  
behalf of Conrad Gesner, who was writing on the early Christian writers. Lawrence  
Humphrey, president of Magdalen, appealed to him to procure for him an exemption  
from the regulations affecting clerical dress, but Humphrey afterwards conformed. On  
2
0 Nov. 1573 one Torporley begged him to obtain for him a studentship at Christ  
Church. Strangers consulted him repeatedly about their religious difficulties. Francis  
Baxter (4 Jan. 1572) inquired his opinion respecting the lawfulness of sponsors, and  
another correspondent asked how he was to cure himself of the habit of blaspheming.  
About the same time Foxe corresponded with Lord-chief-justice Monson respecting  
the appointment of a schoolmaster at Ipswich, and recommended a lady to marry one  
of his intimate friends.  
Much of his correspondence also dealt with the credibility of his monumental  
work. The catholics had been greatly angered by its publication. They nicknamed it  
'Foxe's Golden Legend,' and expressed special disgust at the calendar prefixed to the  
book, in which the protestant martyrs took the place of the old saints (STRYPE,  
Annals, i. 375-80). Foxe's accuracy was first seriously impugned in the 'Dialogi Sex,'  
published in 1566 under the name of Alan Cope, although the author was without  
doubt Nicholas Harpsfield. Foxe showed some sensitiveness to such attacks. He  
instituted inquiries with a view to corrections or corroborations for a second edition,  
which the puritan party deemed it desirable to issue before the meeting of parliament  
in April 1571. This edition (1570) was in two volumes, the first of 934 pages, and the  
second of 1378. New engravings were added; there was a new dedication to the  
queen, in which Foxe declared that he only republished the book to confute the  
attacks of evil-disposed persons, who had made it appear that his work was as 'full of  
lies as lines.' The address to the persecutors of God's truth was omitted; a protestation  
to the true and faithful congregation of Christ's universal church, and four questions  
addressed to the church of Rome were added. Magdalen College paid 6l. 8s. for a  
copy of this new edition, and another copy belonging to Nowell was bequeathed by  
him to Brasenose, where it still is. Convocation meeting at Canterbury on 3 April  
resolved that copies of this edition, which was called in the canon 'Monumenta  
Martyrum,' should be placed in cathedral churches and in the houses of archbishops,  
bishops, deacons, and archdeacons. Although this canon was never confirmed by  
parliament, it was very widely adopted in the country.  
About the same time Foxe prepared, from manuscripts chiefly supplied by  
Archbishop Parker, a collection of the regulations adopted by the reformed English  
church, which was entitled 'Reformatio Legum.' A proposal in parliament to accept  
this collection as the official code of ecclesiastical law met with no success, owing to  
the queen's intervention and her promise never fulfilled that her ministers should  
undertake a like task. But it was printed by Day in 1571, and held by the puritans in  
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VOLUME 14  
high esteem. It was reissued in 1640, and again by Edward Card well in 1850. In the  
same year (1571) Foxe performed for Parker a more important task. He produced,  
with a dedication to the queen, an edition of the Anglo-Saxon text of the Gospels.  
This was similarly printed by Day, and is now a: rare book. Two years later he  
collected the works of Tindal, Frith, and Barnes, giving extracts from his own account  
of the writers in his 'Actes.'  
On 2 June 1572 Foxe's pupil and patron, the Duke of Norfolk, was executed,  
at the age of thirty-six, for conspiring with Mary Queen of Scots and the catholic  
nobility against Elizabeth. Foxe attended him to the scaffold. Some time before he  
had heard the rumours of Norfolk's contemplated marriage with the Queen of Scots,  
and had written a strong protest against it. Foxe's biographers have exaggerated the  
influence which his early training exerted on the duke and on his brother, Henry  
Howard, afterwards earl of Northampton. It is obvious that they assimilated few of  
their tutor's religious principles. On the scaffold the duke denied that he was a  
catholic; but he, like his brother in after years, had shown unmistakable leanings to  
Catholicism. It is to the credit of both Foxe and the duke that their affection for each  
other never waned. The duke directed his heirs to allow Foxe an annuity of 20l. On 14  
Oct. of the same year Bishop Pilkington installed Foxe in a prebendal stall at Durham  
Cathedral; but Foxe was still obstinately opposed to the surplice, and within the year  
he resigned the office. Tanner asserts that he was at one time vicar of St. Giles's,  
Cripplegate. Foxe's friend, Robert Crowley, held this benefice for a long period; but  
he was suspended between 1569 and 1578, when Foxe may have assisted in the work  
of the parish. In 1575 Foxe energetically sought to obtain the remission of the capital  
sentence in the case of two Dutch anabaptists condemned to the stake for their  
opinions. He wrote to the queen, Lord Burghley, and Lord-chief-justice Monson,  
pointing out the disproportion between the offence and the punishment, and  
deprecating the penalty of death in cases of heresy. He also appealed to one of the  
prisoners to acknowledge the errors of his opinion, with which he had no sympathy. A  
respite of a month was allowed, but both prisoners were burnt at the stake 22 July. In  
1
1
576 and 1583 the third and fourth editions of the 'Actes' were issued. On 1 April  
577 Foxe preached a Latin sermon at the baptism of a Jew, Nathaniel, in Allhallows  
Church, Lombard Street (cf. 'Elizabethan England and the Jews,' by the present writer,  
in New Shakspere Soc. Trans. 1888). The title of the original ran: 'De Oliva  
Evangelica. Concio in baptismo Iudæi habita. Londini, primo mens. April.' London,  
by Christopher Barker, 1577, dedicated to Sir Francis Walsingham. At the close is a  
prose 'Appendicula de Christo Triumphante,' dedicated to Sir Thomas Heneage. A  
translation by James Bell appeared in 1578, with the Jew's confession of faith. In  
1
580 the same translator issued a tract entitled 'The Pope Confuted,' which professed  
to be another translation from Foxe, although the original is not identified. Tanner  
assigns 'A New Years Gift touching the deliverance of certain Christians from the  
Turkish gallies' to 1579, and says it was published in London. Foxe completed  
Haddon's second reply to Osorius in his 'Contra Hieron. Osorium . . . Responsio  
Apologetica,' dedicated to Sebastian, king of Portugal (Latin version 1577, English  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
translation 1581). In 1583 he contested Osorius's view of 'Justification by Faith' in a  
new treatise on the subject, 'De Christo gratis iustificante. Contra Osorianam  
iustitiam. Lond., by Thomas Purfoot, impensis Geor. Byshop,' 1583. Tanner mentions  
an English translation dated 1598. 'Disputatio Ioannis Foxii Angli contra Iesuitas'  
appeared in 1585 at Rochelle, in the third volume of 'Doctrinæ Iesuiticæ Præcipua  
Capita.' According to Tanner, Foxe also edited in the same year Bishop Pilkington's  
'Latin Commentary on Nehemiah.'  
Foxe's health in 1586 was rapidly breaking. An attempt in June of that year on  
the part of Bishop Piers of Salisbury to deprive him of the lease of Shipton much  
annoyed him; but the bishop did not press his point when he learned that he might by  
forbearance 'pleasure that good man Mr. Foxe.' Foxe died after much suffering in  
April 1587, and was buried in St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate, where a monument,  
with an inscription by his son Samuel, is still extant. His final work, 'Eicasmi seu  
Meditationes in Sacram Apocalypsin,' was printed posthumously in 1587 by George  
Bishop, and dedicated by Foxe's son Samuel to Archbishop Whitgift. Foxe was  
charitable to the poor, although he never was well-to-do, and would seem to have  
been of a cheerful temperament, despite his fervent piety. A letter to him from Bishop  
Parkhurst shows that he was a lover and a judge of dogs. His wife, who possessed all  
the womanly virtues, died 22 April 1605. Two sons, Samuel and Simeon, are  
separately noticed. A daughter, born in Flanders in 1555, and the two children Rafe  
and Mary, baptised at Waltham Abbey early in 1566, seem to have completed his  
family.  
Of Foxe's great work, the 'Actes and Monuments,' four editions were  
published in his lifetime, viz. in 1563, 1570, 1576, and 1583. Five later editions are  
dated respectively 1596, 1610, 1632, 1641, and 1684. All are in folio. The first edition  
was in one volume, the next four in two volumes, and the last four named in three.  
The fifth edition (1596) consisted of twelve hundred copies. The edition of 1641  
includes for the first time the memoir of the author, the authenticity of which is much  
contested. All have woodcuts, probably by German artists, inserted in the printed  
page. The first eight editions are all rare; the first two excessively rare. No quite  
perfect copy of the 1563 edition is extant. Slightly imperfect copies are at the British  
Museum, the Bodleian, the Cambridge University Library, Magdalen and Christ  
Church, Oxford. In the Huth Library a good copy has been constructed out of two  
imperfect ones. Early in the seventeenth century the first edition had become scarce,  
and Archbishop Spotiswood, writing before 1639, denied its existence. The corrected  
edition of 1570, which convocation directed to be placed in all cathedral churches, is  
more frequently met with. Many Oxford colleges possess perfect copies, but as early  
as 1725 Hearne wrote that this edition also was excessively rare. The British Museum  
possesses a complete set of the nine early editions.  
Foxe's 'Actes 'is often met with in libraries attached to parish churches. This  
was not strictly in obedience to the order of convocation of 1571, which only  
mentioned cathedral churches; but many clergymen deemed it desirable to give the  
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VOLUME 14  
order a liberal interpretation, and to recommend the purchase of the book for their  
churches. According to the vestry minutes of St. Michael, Cornhill, it was agreed, 11  
Jan. 1571-2, 'that the booke of Martyrs of Mr. Foxe and the paraphrases of Erasmus  
shal be bowght for the church and tyed with a chayne to the Egle bras.' Foxe's  
volumes cost the parish 2l. 2s. 6d. At the church of St. John the Baptist, Glastonbury,  
the 1570 edition is also known to have been bought at the same time. Various editions  
mostly mutilated but still chained are known to exist or have very recently existed in  
the parish churches of Apethorpe (Northamptonshire), Arreton (Isle of Wight),  
Chelsea, Enstone (Oxfordshire), Kinver (Staffordshire), Lessingham (Norfolk), St.  
Nicholas (Newcastle-on-Tyne), Northwold (Norfolk), Stratford-on-Avon, Waltham,  
St. Cuthbert (Wells).  
Of modern editions that edited by S. R. Cattley, with introduction by Canon  
Townsend, in eight volumes (1837-41), is the best known. It professed to be based on  
the 1583 edition, with careful collation of other early editions. But Dr. Maitland  
proved these pretensions to be false, and showed that the editing was perfunctorily  
and ignorantly performed. Slight improvements were made in a reissue (1844-9). In  
1
877 Dr. Stoughton professed to edit the book again in eight volumes, but his text and  
notes are not very scholarly. The earliest abridgment was prepared by Timothy Bright  
and issued, with a dedication to Sir Francis Walsingham, in 1589. Another, by the  
Rev. Thomas Mason of Odiham, appeared, under the title of 'Christ's Victorie over  
Sathans Tyrannic,' in 1615. Slighter epitomes are Leigh's 'Memorable Collections,'  
1
651; 'A brief Historical Relation of the most material passages and persecutions of  
the Church of Christ . . . collected by Jacob Bauthumley,' London, 1676; and  
ΜΑΡΤΥΡΟΛΟΓΙΑ ΑΛΦΑΒΕΤΙΚΕ' by N. T., M.A., T.C.C., London, 1677. A  
'
modern abridgment, by John Milner (1837), was reissued in 1848 and 1863, with an  
introduction by Ingram Cobbin. Numerous extracts have been published separately,  
mainly as religious tracts. John Stockwood appended to his 'Treasure of Trueth,' 1576,  
'Notes appertayning to the matter of Election gathered by the Godly and learned  
father, I. Foxe.' Hakluyt appropriated Foxe's account of Richard I's voyage to  
Palestine (Voyages, 1598, vol. ii.) Foxe's accounts of the martyrs of Sussex, Suffolk,  
and other counties have been collected and issued in separate volumes. With the  
puritan clergy, and in almost all English households where puritanism prevailed,  
Foxe's 'Actes 'was long the sole authority for church history, and an armoury of  
arguments in defence of protestantism against Catholicism. Even Nicholas Ferrar, in  
his community of Little Gidding, Huntingdonshire, directed that a chapter of it should  
be read every Sunday evening along with the Bible, and clergymen repeatedly made  
its stories of martyrdom the subject of their sermons. But as early as 1563, when  
Nicholas Harpsfield wrote his 'Sex Dialogi,' which his friend, Alan Cope, published  
under his own name, Foxe's veracity has been powerfully attacked. Robert Parsons  
the Jesuit condemned the work as a carefully concocted series of lies in his 'Treatise  
of the Three Conversions of England,' 1603. Archbishop Laud in 1638 refused to  
license a new edition for the press (RUSHWORTH, ii. 450), and was charged at his  
trial with having ordered the book to be withdrawn from some parish churches  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
(
LAUD, Works, iv. 405). Peter Heylyn denied that Foxe was an authority on matters  
of doctrine affecting the church of England. Jeremy Collier contested his accuracy in  
his 'Ecclesiastical History,' 1702-14. Dr. John Milner, the Roman catholic bishop of  
Castabala (d. 1826), and George Leo Haydock, in 'A Key to the Roman Catholic  
Office,' 1823, are the best modern representatives of catholic critics. William  
Eusebius Andrews's 'Examination of Foxe's Calendar,' 3 vols. 1826, is an intemperate  
attack from the same point of view. But the most learned indictment of Foxe's honesty  
and accuracy was Dr. S. R. Maitland, who in a series of pamphlets and letters issued  
between 1837 and 1842 subjected portions of his great work to a rigorous scrutiny.  
The enormous size of Foxe's work has prevented a critical examination of the  
whole. But it is plain from such examination as the work has undergone that Foxe was  
too zealous a partisan to write with historical precision. He is a passionate advocate,  
ready to accept any prima facie evidence. His style has the vigour that comes of deep  
conviction, and there is a pathetic picturesqueness in the forcible simplicity with  
which he presents his readers with the details of his heroes' sufferings. His popularity  
is thus amply accounted for. But the coarse ribaldry with which he belabours his  
opponents exceeds all literary license. His account of the protestant martyrs of the  
sixteenth century is mainly based on statements made by the martyrs themselves or by  
their friends, and they thus form a unique collection of documents usually  
inaccessible elsewhere and always illustrative of the social habits and tone of thought  
of the English protestants of his day. 'A Compendious Register' (Lond. 1559) of the  
Marian martyrs by Thomas Brice doubtless supplied some hints. Foxe's mistakes  
sometimes arise from faulty and hasty copying of original documents, but are more  
often the result of wilful exaggeration. A very friendly critic, John Deighton, showed  
that Foxe's account of the martyrdom of 'Jhon Home and a woman' at Newent on 25  
Sept. 1556 is an amplification of the suffering at the stake of Edward Home on 25  
Sept. 1558 (NICHOLS, p. 69). No woman suffered at all. The errors in date and  
Christian name in the case of the man are very typical. Foxe moreover undoubtedly  
included among his martyrs persons executed for ordinary secular offences. He  
acknowledged his error in the case of John Marbeck, a Windsor 'martyr' of 1543  
whom he represented, in his text of 1563 to have been burnt, whereas the man was  
condemned, but pardoned. But Foxe was often less ingenuous. He wrote that one  
Greenwood or Grimwood of Hitcham, near Ipswich, Suffolk, having obtained the  
conviction of a 'martyr' John Cooper, on concocted evidence, died miserably soon  
afterwards. Foxe was informed that Greenwood was alive and that the story of his  
death was a fiction. He went to Ipswich to examine witnesses, but never made any  
alteration in his account of the matter. At a later date (according to an obiter dictum of  
Coke) a clergyman named Prick recited Foxe's story about Greenwood from the pulpit  
of Hitcham church. Greenwood was present and proceeded against Prick for libel, but  
the courts held that no malicious defamation was intended (see CROKE, Reports, ed.  
Leach, ii. 91). Foxe confessed that his story of Bishop Gardiner's death is derived  
from hearsay, but it is full of preposterous errors, some of which Foxe's personal  
knowledge must have enabled him to correct. With regard to the sketch of early  
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church history which precedes his story of the martyrs, he undoubtedly had recourse  
to some early documents, especially to bishops' registers, but he depends largely on  
printed works like Crespin's 'Actiones et Monimenta Martyrum,' Geneva, 1560, or  
Illyricus's 'Catalogus Testium Veritatis,' Basle, 1556. It has been conclusively shown  
that his chapter on the Waldenses is directly translated from the 'Catalogus 'of  
lllyricus, although Illyricus is not mentioned by Foxe among the authorities whom he  
acknowledges to have consulted. Foxe claims to have consulted 'parchment  
documents 'on the subject, whereas he only knew them in the text of Illyricus's book.  
This indicates a loose notion of literary morality which justifies some of the harshest  
judgments passed on Foxe. In answering Alan Cope's 'Sex Dialogi 'in the edition of  
1
570 he acknowledges small errors, but confesses characteristically, 'I heare what you  
will saie; I should have taken more leisure and done it better. I graunt and confesse  
my fault: such is my vice. I cannot sit all the daie (M. Cope) fining and minsing my  
letters and combing my head and smoothing myself all the daie at the glasse of  
Cicero. Yet notwithstanding, doing what I can and doing my good will, me thinkes I  
should not be reprehended.' He was a compiler on a gigantic scale, neither scrupulous  
nor scholarly, but appallingly industrious, and a useful witness to the temper of his  
age.  
Dr. Maitland insisted that Foxe's name should be spelt without the final e. He  
himself spelt it indifferently Fox and Foxe, and latinised it sometimes as Foxus,  
sometimes as Foxius. His contemporaries usually write of him as Foxe.  
Foxe's papers, which include many statements sent to him by correspondents  
in corroboration or in contradiction of his history, but never used by him, descended  
through his eldest son Samuel to his grandson, Thomas Foxe, and through Thomas to  
Thomas's daughter and sole heiress, Alice. Alice married Sir Richard Willys, created  
a baronet in 1646, and their son, Sir Thomas Fox Willys, died a lunatic in 1701.  
Strype obtained the papers shortly before that date, and when Strype died in 1737,  
they were purchased by Edward Harley, earl of Oxford. The majority of them now  
form volumes 416 to 426 and volume 590 in the Harleian collection of manuscripts at  
the British Museum. A few other papers are now among the Lansdowne MSS. 335,  
3
88, 389, 819, and 1045. Strype has worked up many of these papers in his  
'Ecclesiastical Memorials,' 'Life of Cranmer,' and elsewhere. An interesting selection  
is printed by J. G. Nichols in 'Narratives of the Reformation' (Camden Society, 1859).  
A portrait by Glover has been often engraved. A painting by an unknown artist  
is in the National Portrait Gallery, and is inscribed 'An. Dom. 1587. Ætatis suas 70.'  
There is also an engraving in Holland's 'Herωologia,' p. 200.  
[
The earliest life of Foxe, which forms the basis of the many popular lives that  
have been issued for religious purposes by Foxe's admirers, is that prefixed in both  
English and Latin to the second volume of the 1641 edition of the Actes and  
Monuments, and has been generally attributed to his son Samuel, who died in 1629.  
The authorship is very doubtful. Samuel died twelve years before it was issued. The  
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writer says in a brief introductory address that his memoir was written thirty years  
before publication, and there is no sign that it was regarded as a posthumous  
production. .The handwriting of the original in Lansd. MS. 388 is not like that of  
Samuel Foxe's known manuscripts, and the manuscript has been elaborately corrected  
by a second pen. Samuel's claim is practically overthrown, and the suggestion that  
Simeon, Foxe's second son, who died in 1641, was the author, is not of greater value,  
when the writer's ignorance of Foxe's real history is properly appreciated. The dates  
are very few and self-contradictory. The writer, who refers to Foxe as 'Foxius noster  
'or 'sæpe audivi Foxium narrantem,' gives no hint outside the prefatory address to the  
reader that the subject of the biography was his father, and confesses ignorance on  
points about which a son could not have been without direct knowledge. Its value as  
an original authority is very small, and its attribution to Foxe of the power of  
prophecy and other miraculous gifts shows that it was chiefly written for purposes of  
religious edification. In 1579 Kichard Day, John Day's son, edited and translated  
Foxe's Christus Triumphans, and his preface supplies some good biographical notes.  
Strype, who intended writing a full life, is the best authority, although his references  
to Foxe are widely scattered through his works. The Annals, I. i. 375 et seq., give a  
good account of the publication of the Actes. The careless memoir by Canon  
Townsend prefixed to the 1841 edition of the Actes and Monuments has been  
deservedly censured by Dr. Maitland. In 1870 it was rewritten by the Kev. Josiah  
Pratt, who took some advantage of the adverse criticism lavished on Townsend's  
work, and produced an improved memoir, forming the first volume of the  
Reformation series of Church Historians of England. Wood's Athense Oxon.; Fuller's  
Worthies and Church History; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; the Troubles at Frankfort;  
Nichols's Narratives of the Reformation; Dr. Haitland's pamphlets; Notes and Queries,  
2
nd ser.; and W. Winter's Biographical Notes on John Foxe, 1876, are all useful.]  
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VOLUME 14  
The Life and Martyrdom of Dermot O'Hurley, Archbishop  
Of Cashel  
From Historiae Catholicae Iberniae Compendium by Philip O'Sullivan Beare (Lisbon, 1621), II. iv. c.  
1
9. Translated by M. Byrne, in Ireland under Elizabeth, Sealy, Bryers and Walker, Dublin, 1903, and  
reprinted in Irish History from Contemporary Sources, ed. Constantia Maxwell, George Allen and  
Unwin, London, 1923.  
[
Editor's Note: This, and the following chapter, have been included in case anyone  
doubts that Protestants were just as vigorous in persecuting as Catholics]  
Dermot O'Hurley was by birth an Irishman, the son of a gentleman, and his  
boyhood was, under the care of his parents, politely brought up, and instructed in the  
rudiments of letters. As he grew older he made such progress at Louvain and Paris in  
the higher studies that, if confronted with men of his own age, he was second to  
scarcely anyone as a grammarian: he was equal to the most eloquent as a rhetorician;  
superior to most in jurisprudence; and in theology inferior to few. Having obtained the  
degree of Doctor in Theology and Civil and Canon Law, he for four years publicly  
taught law at Louvain. Uniting to these accomplishments a splendid presence, dignity,  
and gravity of mind, he seemed to the supreme Pontiff, Gregory XIII, after he had  
spent some years at Rome and taken Holy Orders, worthy of being consecrated  
archbishop of Cashel. As soon as this office was imposed upon him, he returned to  
Ireland, to perish in that most doleful time for his country when its sceptre was  
swayed by Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England, who was not only infected with the  
stain of most foul heresy, but was also the bitterest enemy of the Catholic faith and of  
holy bishops and priests.  
Our archbishop, with the greatest pains and zeal, administered the Sacraments  
to the flock of his jurisdiction, and expounded the Gospel of the Lord, confirming all  
in the Faith, and for nearly two years vainly sought after by the English, being  
protected by the care and devotion of the Irish, and disguising his identity and calling  
by wearing secular apparel. Eventually it chanced one day while the archbishop was  
staying with Thomas Fleming, an Anglo-Irish baron, at his castle of Slane, in his own  
dominion, a grave question was started at dinner, in the presence of the squint-eyed  
Robert Dillon, one of the Queen's judges. The heretics, giving each his own opinion,  
freely proceeded to such extreme folly, that Dermot, who was present, and long kept  
silent, lest he should betray himself, could not any longer stand their rashness, and so,  
to the great astonishment of all, he easily refuted the silly doctrines of the heretics,  
with an air of authority, and great eloquence and learning. Hereupon Dillon was led to  
surmise that this was some distinguished person who might greatly obstruct heresy.  
He related the matter to Adam Loftus, Chancellor of Ireland, and to Henry Wallop,  
Lord Treasurer, both Englishmen, and with whom the government of Ireland then  
rested, as the Viceroy was absent. These ordered Baron Thomas, under heavy  
penalties, to send them the archbishop in chains. The archbishop, having meantime  
left Slane, was arrested by the baron and royalist emissaries in the castle at Carrick-  
on-Suir in the month of September 1583, whilst staying with Thomas Butler,  
surnamed the Black, Earl of Ormonde, who was much offended and distressed at the  
arrest, and afterwards did his best to rescue the bishop from the executioners, except  
that he did not take up arms as he ought to have done in such a case, and perhaps  
would have done, but that he was a Protestant.  
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The bishop being brought to Dublin, the chief city of the Kingdom, was kept  
many days in chains in a dark, dismal, and foetid prison, until that day in the  
following year, which is kept under the name of the Lord's Supper, on which day he  
was attacked by the heretics in this manner first, he was brought before Adam the  
Chancellor, and Henry, the Treasurer, and civilly and kindly invited to follow the  
tenets of the heretics, and promised large rewards on condition of abjuring his sacred  
character, relinquishing the office received from the Pope, and (O villainy!) entering  
upon the archbishopric under the Queen's authority. He told them that he was bound  
and resolved never to desert the Church, Faith, or Vicar of Christ Jesus for any  
consideration. Then the Chancellor and Treasurer endeavoured to deceive him by  
cunning arguments, straining every nerve to establish the truth of their falsehoods.  
Dermot, not relishing this, especially as he was not allowed to reply to their nonsense,  
bade them, stupid and ignorant men (such was his high spirit), not to offer ridiculous  
and false doctrines to him, an archbishop, and doctor of celebrated academies. Then  
the heretics, filled with anger, exclaimed if we cannot convince you by argument, we  
will make you quit this, your false law, and embrace our religion or feel our power.  
The bishop was bound hand and foot, was thrown on the ground, and tied to a large  
stake. His feet and legs were encased in top boots (a kind of boot at that time  
common, made of leather, and reaching above the knee) filled with a mixture of salt,  
bitumen, oil, tallow, pitch, and boiling water. The legs so booted were placed on iron  
bars, and horribly and cruelly roasted over a fire. When this torture had lasted a whole  
hour, the pitch, oil and other mixtures boiling up, burnt off not only the skin, but  
consumed also the flesh, and slowly destroyed the muscles, veins and arteries; and  
when the boots were taken off, carrying with them pieces of the roasted flesh, they  
left no small part of the hones bare and raw, a horrible spectacle for the bystanders,  
and scarcely credible. But the martyr, having his mind filled with thoughts of God and  
holy things, never uttered a word, but held out to the end of the torture with the same  
cheerfulness and serenity of countenance he had exhibited at the commencement of  
his sufferings. When however, in this savage way, the tyrants had failed to break the  
unconquerable spirit of the martyr by their more than Phalaric cruelty, he was by their  
order, brought back to his former prison, a foul place filled with a dense fog, ready to  
endure worse torments, if such could be devised.  
There was at this time in Dublin, Charles Mac Morris, a priest of the Society  
of Jesus, skilled in medicine and chirurgery, who because he was of the faith of  
Christ, had been imprisoned by the English, and again discharged by them on account  
of curing some difficult cases for certain noblemen. This man visited the holy bishop  
in prison, and gave him such medical treatment, that on the fourteenth day he was  
able to get up from his bed for a little while. The Chancellor and Treasurer, learning  
of this, and that the Earl of Ormonde was coming, by whose influence and power they  
feared Dermot would be saved, determined in their malign wickedness to put him to  
death as soon as possible. Fearing, how ever, that the people would raise a  
disturbance, and rescue their pastor from death if it were generally known by the  
citizens that he was to be executed, they ordered the dregs of their soldiers and  
executioners to bring out the bishop on a car, early in the morning, before sunrise, and  
before the people were up, and hang him on a gallows outside the city. Which being  
done, out of all the citizens, he was met by only two, and a certain friend who had  
been extremely faithful to him, and had made him his particular care from the time of  
his capture. These followed him; and before he was strung up the archbishop, seizing  
the hand of his friend, and strongly squeezing it, is said to have impressed on the palm  
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in an indelible red colour, the sign of the Cross -- a rare and holy pledge of his  
gratitude to his most faithful friend. Thereupon he was hung by a halter made of  
plaited osiers, and in a short time strangled, and so dying, acquired eternal reward in  
Heaven in the year of our Lord, 1584, on the seventh day of the month of June.  
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The Execution Of Servetus For Blasphemy, Heresy, &  
Obstinate Anabaptism, Defended  
By John Knox  
Are ye [the Anabaptists] able to prove, ([as ye have maliciously accused us),  
that we teach the people not to convert from their sins and wicked imaginations, to the  
last hour of their departure? do we promise to all thieves and murderers the same  
grace and favour that David, Peter, and this thief found? I trust thy own conscience  
knoweth the contrary. Permit or suffer we (be they never so high) manifest offenders  
to live amongst us, after their own appetites? And yet ashamest thou not impudently  
thus to write, "But such lips, such letuce, such disciples, such masters: for your chief  
Apollos be persecutors, on whom the blood of Servetus crieth a vengeance; so doth  
the blood of others more whom I could name. But forasmuch as God hath partly  
already revenged their blood, and served some of their persecutors with the same  
measure wherewith they measured to others, I will make no mention of them at this  
time."  
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who so revealeth the  
things that lie in secret, that hypocrites at length, howsoever they dissemble for a  
time, are compelled to notify and bewray themselves. Before, to some it might have  
appeared that the zeal of God's glory, the love of virtue, the hatred of vice, and the  
salvation of the people, whom, by us, ye judged to be blinded and deceived, had  
carried you headlong into such vehemency, (as ye be men zealous and fervent,) that  
no kind of accusation was thought by you sufficient to make us odious unto the  
people; lies against us imagined were not only tolerable, but also laudable and holy;  
scriptures by you willingly and wittingly corrupted, did serve to defend God's justice  
and his glory, what we by our doctrine oppugn and improve. But these your last  
words do bewray the matter, that in what soever faces you list transform yourselves,  
your grief will appear to proceed from another fountain than from any of these which  
ye pretend, and I before have rehearsed.  
O the death of Servetus, your dear brother, for whose deliverance your  
champion Castalio solemnly did pray, with whom, if once ye could have spoken, that  
kingdom, which ye hope for, had begun to be enlarged; his blood, I say, with the  
blood of others, I think ye mean of your prophetess Jone of Kent, do cry a vengeance  
in your ears and hearts. That none other cause do you see of the shedding of the blood  
of those most constant martyrs of Christ Jesus, Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley,  
Hugh Latimer, John Hooper, John Rogers, John Bradford, and of others more, but that  
God hath partly revenged their blood, that is of your great prophet and prophetess,  
upon their persecutors, and hath served them with the same measure with the which  
they served others, I appeal to the judgment of all those that fear God. What is thy  
judgment, and the judgment of thy faction, of that glorious gospel of Christ Jesus,  
which of late hath been suppressed in England; what is thy judgment of those most  
valiant soldiers and most happy martyrs of Christ Jesus, upon whom, O blasphemous  
mouth, thou sayest God hath taken vengeance, which is an horrible blasphemy in the  
ears of all the godly; I will not now so much labor to confute by thy pen, as that my  
full purpose is to lay the same to thy charge, if I shall apprehend thee in any  
commonwealth where justice against blasphemers may be ministered, as God's Word  
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VOLUME 14  
requireth. And hereof I give thee warning, lest that after thou shalt complain, that  
under the cloak of friendship I have deceived thee. Thy manifest defection from God,  
and this thy open blasphemy spoken against his eternal truth, and against such as most  
constantly did suffer for testimony of the same, have so broken and dissolved all  
familiarity which hath been betwixt us, that although thou were my natural brother, I  
durst not conceal thy iniquity in this case.  
But now to the matter. I have before proved you malicious and venomous  
liars, and therefore unworthy to bear testimony against us. Now resteth to be proved,  
that ye are blasphemers of God, and persons defamed. Solomon affirmeth, "That he  
that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the innocent, are alike abominable  
before God." [Prov. 17.] Which sentence is not to be understood of judges only, but is  
to be referred to every man; for of every one doth God require, that he hate, and in his  
heart and mouth condemn, that which God himself hath condemned; and also, that he  
allow and justify that which God pronounceth just, lawful, and holy. And if the  
contrary be found even in a multitude, God doth not only punish the chief offenders,  
but also upon their favorers, maintainers, and justifiers, doth he commonly pour the  
same plagues and vengeance. And hereof is that rare and fearful punishment taken  
upon Dathan and Abiram sufficient proof [Num. 16.]; for they joined with Corah were  
the authors of the conspiracy raised against Moses and Aaron. But did they alone  
sustain the vengeance? No; but their households, children, wives, tents, and substance  
in the same contained, did the earth in a moment devour and swallow up. And why?  
because they did justify the cause of those wicked, and insofar as in them lay, did  
maintain the same. No man, I trust, will deny, but that he who killeth an innocent man  
is a murderer, although it be under the cloak of justice. But that he who, having lawful  
authority to kill, and yet suffereth the murderer to live, is a murderer, in this  
perchance some men may doubt. But if the law of God be diligently searched, this  
doubt shall easily be resolved. For it will witness that no less ought the murderer, the  
blasphemer, and such other, to suffer the death, than that the meek and the fearer of  
God should be defended. And also, that such as maintain and defend the one, are no  
less criminal before God than those that oppress the others.  
One example I will adduce for all. God gave into the hands of Ahab,  
Benhadad, king of Syria [1 Kings 20], who was great enemy to Israel; whom he upon  
certain conditions of amity sent home to his country. But what sentence was  
pronounced against Ahab? "Thus saith the Eternal, Because thou hast let go out of thy  
hands a man whom I appointed to die, thy soul (that is, thy life) shall be in the place  
of his life, and thy people in the place of his people." [verse 42.] Now to you justifiers  
of Servetus: Servetus was an abominable blasphemer against God; and you are  
justifiers of Servetus: therefore ye are blasphemers before God, like abominable as he  
was. The major I intend shortly to prove, so far as shall be sufficient at this time. The  
minor ye do not deny; for some by Apologies, some by books, and all by your  
tongues, do justify his cause. And the conclusion is infallibly gathered of the former  
words of the Holy Ghost.  
Ye will not easily admit that Servetus was convicted of blasphemy; for if so  
be, ye must be compelled to confess (except that ye will refuse God) that the sentence  
of death executed against him was not cruelty; neither yet that the judges who justly  
pronounced that sentence were murderers nor persecutors; but that this death was the  
execution of God's judgment, and they the true and faithful servants of God, who,  
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when no other remedy was found, did take away iniquity from amongst them. That  
God hath appointed death by his law, without mercy, to be executed upon the  
blasphemers, is evident by that which is written, Leviticus 24. But what blasphemy is,  
may some perchance doubt. If righteously we shall consider and weigh the Scriptures,  
we shall find that to speak blasphemy, or to blaspheme God, is not only to deny that  
there is a God, but that also it is lightly to esteem the power of the eternal God; to  
have, or to spread abroad, of his Majesty such opinions as may make his Godhead to  
be doubted of; to depart from the true honouring and religion of God to the  
imagination of man's inventions; obstinately to maintain and defend doctrine and  
diabolical opinions plainly repugnant to God's truth; to judge those things which God  
judgeth necessary for our salvation, not to be necessary; and finally, to persecute the  
truth of God, and the members of Christ's body.  
Of the first and second sort both was Sennacherib and proud Rabshakeh; who,  
comparing God with the idols of the Gentiles, did not only lightly esteem his godly  
power, but also, so far as in them was, studied to take out of the hearts of the Israelites  
all right and perfect opinion of God. At whom the Prophet, in the person of God,  
demandeth this question, "Whom hast thou blasphemed?"  
Of the third sort were both Israel and Judah, declining to idolatry against  
God's express commandment, whom the Prophets so often do affirm to blaspheme the  
Holy One of Israel. "Because (saith Isaiah) they have repudiated the law of the Lord  
of Hosts, and the word of the Holy One of Israel, contumeliously have they  
blasphemed." And Ezekiel [chap. 20], after that he hath most sharply rebuked the  
Israelites for their idolatry, he addeth, "Yet in this your fathers have blasphemed me,  
though they had before grievously transgressed against me; for when I had brought  
them into the land, for the which I lifted up my hand to give it them, they saw every  
high hill, and all the thick trees, and they offered there their sacrifices, and there they  
presented their offering," &c.  
Of the fourth sort were Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom Paul gave to the  
Devil, that they should learn not to blaspheme. [1 Tim. 1.]  
Of the fifth sort were the multitude of the Jews, who judged, and to this day do  
judge, the death of Christ Jesus, his blessed ordinance, the public preaching of his  
Evangel, and the administration of his Sacraments, to be nothing necessary to our  
salvation.  
And of the last, doth not Paul deny himself to have been a blasphemer, and a  
persecutor, before his conversion [1 Cor. 15.]  
Now, if I shall plainly prove the most part, yea, all these, (except, ye will say,  
he shed no man's blood,) to have been in your great prophet Servetus, yea, yet to be in  
you all of the Anabaptistical sort, have I not sufficiently proved both him and you  
blasphemers?  
Albeit I be more near of his and your counsel than any of you doth know or  
suspect, yet will I not utter, at this present, all that I can, but will abide till such  
opportunity as God shall offer me, to notify his and your poison to the Church of God,  
that of the same the godly may beware.  
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For the present, I say, first, That Servetus, whom you justify, did maintain,  
and, by word and writing, dispersed abroad, wicked and most devilish opinions of  
God, which might not only make his Godhead to be despised, but also called in doubt  
and question. He judged those things nothing necessary to salvation which Christ hath  
commanded and ordained. And last, that impugning the true religion, he did most  
obstinately maintain his diabolical errors, and did resist the plain truth to the death.  
His erroneous opinions of God and of his eternal Godhead were these.  
1
. Whosoever believeth any Trinity in the essence of God, hath not the perfect  
God, but gods imagined, and illusion of Devils.  
2
. That Christ is the Son of God, only insofar as he is begotten of God in the  
womb of the Virgin, and that not only by the power of the Holy Spirit, but because  
that God begat him of his own substance.  
3
. That the Word of God descending from the heaven, is now the flesh of  
Christ, so that the flesh of Christ is from the heaven. Further, that the body of Christ is  
the body of the Godhead, the flesh of God, godly and heavenly, as it that is begotten  
of the substance of God.3  
4
. That the soul of Christ is God, and that the flesh of Christ is God, and that  
aswell the flesh as the soul were in the very substance of the Godhead from all  
eternity.  
5
6
. That God is the Father of the Holy Ghost.  
. That Christ having the participation of the Godhead or of God, and  
participation of man, may not be called a creature, but one that doth participate with  
creatures.  
7
. As the Word descended into the flesh of Christ, so did the Holy Ghost  
descend into the souls of the Apostles.4  
8
. That Christ, so long as he was conversant in the flesh, received not the new  
Spirit which he was to receive after his resurrection.  
9
. That in all men, from the beginning, is engrafted the Spirit of the Godhead,  
even by the breath of God, and yet may the Spirit, by the which we be illuminated, be  
extinguished.  
1
0. That the substantial Godhead is in all creatures. That the soul of man,  
although it be not God, it is made God by the Spirit, which is God himself.5  
1
1. That the soul is made mortal by sin, even as the flesh is mortal; not that the  
soul returneth to nothing, as neither doth the flesh, but that it dieth when that it is  
deprived of lively action.  
1
2. And that it is holden in hell languishing, as that it should never after live;  
but these that be regenerated have another soul than that they had before, because of  
the substance which is renewed, and for the Godhead which is joined.  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
1
1
3. That alike it is to baptize an infant, as to baptize an ass or a stone.  
4. That there is no mortal sin committed before the age of twenty years.  
These I have thought sufficient to produce at this present, to let the reader  
understand that it is not without cause that I say, that Servetus, whom ye justify, is a  
blasphemer. I have omitted things more horrible and grievous, to avoid the offence of  
godly readers, which suddenly I am not minded to manifest, except that I shall  
understand that your venomous tongues be not stayed by these. I appeal to the  
conscience of Castalio himself, if in every one of these former Propositions which  
concern the Godhead, there be not contained horrible blasphemy. For what is more  
blasphemous, than to affirm that such as believe in the Godhead three distinct  
Persons, have no true God, but the illusion of the Devils: That Christ Jesus is not the  
Eternal Son of the Eternal Father: That there is no distinction betwixt the Father and  
the Son, but in imagination only: That Christ hath no participation of man's nature,  
but that his flesh is from heaven; yea, that it is the flesh of the Godhead: That in  
stocks, stones, and all creatures, is the substantial Godhead? If these, I say, be not  
blasphemies worthy of ten thousand deaths, especially being obstinately maintained  
against all wholesome admonition, let all those that fear God judge; yea, even you  
yourselves, how furious that ever ye be, judge in the matter, even as ye will answer  
before the throne of the Lord Jesus. That contemptuously he spake of baptising of the  
children, of the public preaching of the Evangel, and of the administration of the  
Lord's Supper, that have you common with him. For this is your glory and persuasion  
to all your scholars, that these things be nothing necessary to salvation; yea, most  
straightly ye inhibit all of your sect to frequent any congregation but your own. And  
whether this be blasphemy of your part, or not, to affirm those things nothing  
necessary which Christ Jesus hath established, and commanded to be used in  
remembrance of him to his second coming, I am content that judgment be referred  
even to those that be most indifferent betwixt us and you.  
To supersede the rest of your blasphemies, I return to your book, because, that  
after I purpose to speak of your holy conversation, and of the great perfection that is  
found in you.  
Ye accuse us, that we have written books, in a perpetual memory of our  
cruelty, affirming it to be lawful to put to death such as dissent from us in religion,  
notwithstanding that some of us were of another mind before they came to authority;  
and further, that we have given the sword in to the hands of bloody tyrants.  
True it is, that books are written both by you and by us. For your Master  
Bellius affirmeth, That lawful it is not to the Civil Magistrate to use the sword against  
heretics. To whom that godly learned man, Theodorus Beza, hath answered. In which,  
if you or your Master think not yourselves fully answered, ye may put pen to the  
paper when you list, looking to receive answer with convenient expedition. John  
Calvin hath besides committed to writing the Examination of Servetus, and the Cause  
of his miserable death. Which books, albeit to you they be a perpetual memory of  
cruelty, yet I have good hope, that to our posterity they shall be profitable (as now to  
us be the godly labours of those that before us have fought the same battle against the  
obstinate heretics). And further, seeing both you and we must abide the sentence of  
one Judge, we can not greatly fear the prejudice of your faction.  
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VOLUME 14  
Where ye ask, If these be the sheep which Christ sent forth in the midst of  
wolves, and if the sheep can persecute the wolves? And I demand for answer,  
Whether Moses was a sheep or a wolf, and whether that fearful slaughter executed  
upon idolaters, without respect of persons was not as great a persecution as the  
burning of Servetus and Joan of Kent? To me it appeareth greater. For to them was  
granted no place of repentance; no admonition was given unto them, but, without  
further delay or question, was the brother commanded to kill the brother; yea, the  
father not to spare the son [Lev. 23.] I think, verily, that if judgment should be  
referred unto you, that then should Moses and the tribe of Levi be judged wolves, sent  
to devour innocent sheep. But because we know what God hath allowed, we the less  
fear the judgment of man. If ye claim any privilege by the coming of the Lord Jesus,  
himself will answer, "that he is not come to break nor destroy the law of his heavenly  
Father."  
Where further ye ask, If Abel did kill Cain, or David Saul, or he which is born  
of the Spirit did kill him which is born of the flesh? I answer, If your question be of  
Abel, David, and Isaac, in their proper persons, that none of them did kill any of these  
forenamed. But if thereof ye infer no more, Is it lawful for any of God's Elect to kill  
any man for his conscience sake? I answer, That if under the name of Conscience ye  
include whatsoever seemeth good in your own eyes, that then ye affirm a great  
absurdity, manifestly repugnant aswell to God's law as to the examples of those whom  
God hath highly praised in his holy Scriptures. But because continually ye claim to  
your conscience, to remove from you that vain cover, I ask, If the murderer, adulterer,  
or any other malefactor, should be exempted from punishment of the law, although he  
alledge that he did all thing of conscience? I trust ye will confess, that he ought to be  
mocked that will claim the patrocinie of conscience, when that he doth plainly offend  
against God's will revealed. And why will ye not grant as much in this matter which  
now standeth in controversy? Because (say you) external crimes have no affinity with  
matters of religion; for the conscience of every man is not alike persuaded in the  
service and honouring of God, neither yet in such controversies as God's word hath  
not plainly decided. But I ask, If that be a just excuse why pernicious errors shall be  
obstinately defended, either yet that God's established religion shall be  
contemptuously despised.  
To make the matter more plain, Israel and Judah were not both of one mind in  
the honoring of God, after that the ten tribes departed from the household of David.  
Yea, Judah in the self was often corrupted with pestilent idolatry, insomuch that the  
fathers did offer their children to Moloch; which I am assured they did not without  
some zeal, which they thought to be good conscience. But notwithstanding those  
controversies, divers opinions, and forged consciences at their own appetites, Elijah  
did kill the priests of Baal; and was he born, I pray you, of the flesh? or was he not  
rather regenerated by God's Holy Spirit? Josiah [2 Kings 23] did kill all the priests of  
the high places, and did burn men's bones upon their altars; and was he, I beseech  
you, brother to Cain; or rather fellow-heir of the kingdom promised with Abel? But  
that he was God's most faithful king, after David, I trust ye will not deny, except that  
ye will say, as before boldly ye have affirmed of other, that God revenged blood with  
blood, in that he suffered him to fall in battle. But the Spirit of God, speaking in the  
Prophet Jeremiah, is more mild of judgment, for he absolveth him, and doth affirm  
that he was taken away for the sins of the people. Consider these things, and convict  
us if ye can by Scriptures.  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
We say, the man is not persecuted for his conscience, that, declining from  
God, blaspheming his Majesty, and contemning his religion, obstinately defendeth  
erroneous and false doctrine. This man, I say, lawfully convicted, if he suffer the  
death pronounced by a lawful Magistrate, is not persecuted, (as in the name of  
Servetus ye furiously complain,) but he suffereth punishment according to God's  
commandment, pronounced in Deuteronomy, the 13th chapter.  
To put end to these your calumnies for this time, two things I would require of  
you. First, That thus foolishly ye abuse not the name of conscience, which you say  
constraineth you to write, to the end that ye might awake us out of our dreams.  
Conscience, for assurance of the self in well-doing, must have a testimony of God's  
plain will revealed; which ye shall not find to be your assurance, that so odiously ye  
may accuse us of those crimes whereof ye be never able to convict us.  
The second is, That by plain Scriptures and solid reasons ye study to confute  
our doctrine, and not by raging words, spoken, as it were, by men in a frenzy. You  
shall never be able to prove, either that our doctrine is poisoned, either yet that we  
draw the people to a secure, idle, and careless life. Blessed be God, the Father of our  
Lord Jesus Christ, who of his mere mercy hath caused our doctrine somewhat to  
fructify; our good hope is, that with us and his afflicted Church He will continue his  
fatherly favour, in such sort, that from time to time he will leave documents to the  
ages following, that His heavenly doctrine is not sent in vain. To Him be glory for  
ever.  
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VOLUME 14  
Observations On Foxe's Book Of Martyrs  
By William Cobbett  
Doubtless, out of two hundred and seventy-seven persons (the number stated  
by HUME on authority of Fox) who were thus punished, some may have been real  
martyrs to their opinions, and have been sincere and virtuous persons; but, in this  
number of 277, many were convicted felons, some clearly traitors, as RIDLEY and  
CRANMER. These must be taken from the number, and we may; surely, take such as  
were alive when Fox first published his book, and who expressly begged to decline  
the honour of being enrolled amongst his "Martyrs." As a proof of Fox's total  
disregard of truth, there was, in the next reign, a Protestant parson, as Anthony Wood  
(a Protestant) tells us, who, in a sermon, related, on authority of Fox, that a Catholic  
of the name of GRIMWOOD had been, as Fox said, a great enemy of the Gospellers,  
had been "punished by a judgment of God," and that his "bowels fell out of his body."  
GRIMWOOD was not only alive at the time when the sermon was preached, but  
happened to be present in the church to hear it; and he brought an action of  
defamation against the preacher! Another instance of Fox's falseness relates to the  
death of Bishop GARDINER. Fox and BURNET, and other vile calumniators of the  
acts and actors in Queen Mary's reign, say, that GARDINER, on the day of the  
execution of LATIMER and RIDLEY, kept dinner waiting till the news of their  
suffering should arrive, and that the Duke of Norfolk, who was to dine with him,  
expressed great chagrin at the delay; that, when the news came, "transported with  
joy," they sat down to table, where GARDINER was suddenly seized with the disury,  
and died, in horrible torments, in a fortnight after wards. Now, LATIMER. and  
RIDLEY were put to death on the 16th of October; and COLLIER, in his  
Ecclesiastical History, p. 386, states, that GARDINER opened the Parliament on the  
2
1
1st of October; that he attended in Parliament twice afterwards; that he died on the  
2th of November, of the gout, and not of disury; and that, as to the Duke of Norfolk,  
he had been dead a year when this event took place! What a hypocrite, then, must that  
man he, who pretends to believe in this Fox! Yet, this infamous book has, by the arts  
of the plunderers and their descendants, been circulated to a boundless extent amongst  
the people of England, who have been taught to look upon all the thieves, felons, and  
traitors, whom Fox calls "Martyrs," as sufferers resembling St. Stephen, St. Peter, and  
St. Paul  
The real truth about these "Martyrs," is, that they were, generally, a set of most  
wicked wretches, who sought to destroy the Queen and her Government, and under  
the pretence of conscience and superior piety, to obtain the means of again preying  
upon the people. No mild means could reclaim them: those means had been tried: the  
Queen had to employ vigorous means, or, to suffer her people to continue to be torn  
by the religious factions, created, not by her, but by her two immediate predecessors,  
who had been aided and abetted by many of those who now were punished, and who  
were worthy of ten thousand deaths each, if ten thousand deaths could have been  
endured. They were, without a single exception, apostates, perjurers, or plunderers;  
and, the greater part of them had also been guilty of flagrant high treason against  
Mary herself, who had spared their lives; but whose lenity they had requited by every  
effort within their power to overset her authority and the Government. To make  
particular mention of all the ruffians that perished upon this occasion, would be a task  
as irksome as it would be useless; but, there were amongst them, three of  
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FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS  
CRANMER's Bishops and himself! For, now, justice, at last, overtook this most  
mischievous of all villains, who had justly to go to the same stake that he had unjustly  
caused so many others to be tied to; the three others were HOOPER, LATIMER, and  
RIDLEY, each of whom was, indeed, inferior in villany to CRANMER, but to few  
other men that have ever existed.  
HOOPER was a MONK; he broke his vow of celibacy and married a  
Flandrican; be, being the ready tool of the Protector Somerset, whom he greatly aided  
in his plunder of the churches, got two Bishoprics, though he himself had written  
against pluralities; he was a co-operator in all the monstrous cruelties inflicted on the  
people, during the reign of Edward, and was particularly active in recommending the  
use of German troops to bend the necks of the English to the Protestant yoke.  
LATIMER began his career, not only as a Catholic priest, but as a most furious  
assailant of the Reformation religion. By this he obtained from Henry VIII. the  
Bishopric of Worcester. He next changed his opinions; but he did not give up his  
Catholic Bishopric! Being suspected, he made abjuration of Protestantism; he thus  
kept his Bishopric for twenty years, while he inwardly reprobated the principles of the  
Church, and which Bishopric he held in virtue of an oath to oppose, to the utmost of  
his power, all dissenters from the Catholic Church; in the reigns of Henry and Edward  
he sent to the stake Catholics and Protestants for holding opinions, which he himself  
had before held openly, or that he held secretly at the time of his so sending them.  
Lastly, he was a chief both in the hands of the tyrannical Protector SOMERSET in  
that black and unnatural act of bringing his brother Lord THOMAS SOMERSET, to  
the block, RIDLEY had been a Catholic bishop in the reign of Henry VIII., when he  
sent to the stake Catholics who denied the King's supremacy, and Protestants, who  
denied transubstantiation. In Edward's reign he was a Protestant bishop, and denied  
transubstantiation himself; and then he sent to the stake Protestants who differed from  
the creed of CRANMER. He, in Edward's reign, got the Bishopric of London by a  
most roguish agreement to transfer the greater part of its possessions to the rapacious  
ministers and courtiers of that day. Lastly, he was guilty of high treason against the  
Queen, in openly (as we have seen in paragraph 220 ), and from the pulpit, exhorting  
the people to stand by the usurper Lady JANE; and thus endeavouring to produce civil  
war and the death of his sovereign, in order that he might, by treason, be enabled to  
keep that bishopric which he had obtained by simony, including perjury.  
A pretty trio of Protestant "Saints," quite worthy, however, of "SAINT"  
MARTIN LUTHER, who says, in his own work, that it was by the arguments of the  
Devil (who, he says, frequently ate, drank, and slept with him) that he was induced to  
turn Protestant: three worthy followers of that LUTHER, who is, by his disciple  
MELANCTHON, called "a brutal man, void of piety and humanity, one more a Jew  
than a Christian:" three followers altogether worthy of this great founder of that  
Protestantism, which has split the world into contending sects: but, black as these are,  
they bleach the moment CRANMER appears in his true colours. But, alas! where is  
the pen, or tongue, to give us those colours! Of the 65 years that he lived, and of the  
3
5 years of his manhood, 29 years were spent in the commission of a series of acts,  
which, for wickedness in their nature and for mischief in their consequences, are  
absolutely without any thing approaching to a parallel in the annals of human infamy.  
Being a fellow of a college at Cambridge, and having, of course, made an engagement  
(as the fellows do to this day), not to marry while he was a fellow, he married  
secretly, and still enjoyed his fellowship. While a married man he became at priest,  
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VOLUME 14  
and took the oath of celibacy; and, going to Germany, he married another wife, the  
daughter of a Protestant "saint;" so that he had now two wives at one time, though his  
oath bound him to have no wife at all. He, as Archbishop, enforced the law of  
celibacy, while he himself secretly kept his German frow in the palace at Canterbury,  
having, as we have seen in paragraph 104 , imported her in a chest. He, as  
ecclesiastical judge, divorced Henry VIII. from three wives, the grounds of his  
decision in two of the cases being directly the contrary of those which he himself had  
laid down when he declared the marriages to be valid; and, in the case of ANNE  
BOLEYN, he, as ecclesiastical judge, pronounced, that Anne had never been the  
King's wife; while, as a member of the House of Peers, he voted for her death, as  
having been an adulteress, and, thereby, guilty of treason to. her husband. As  
Archbishop under Henry (which office he entered upon with a premeditated false oath  
on his lips) he sent men and women to the stake because they were not Catholics, and  
he sent Catholics to the stake, because they would not acknowledge the King's  
supremacy, and thereby perjure themselves as he had so often done. Become openly a  
Protestant, in Edward's reign, and openly professing those very principles, for the  
professing of which he had burnt others, he now burnt his fellow-Protestants, because  
their grounds for protesting were different from his. As executor for the will of his old  
master, Henry, which gave the crown (after Edward) to his daughters, Mary and  
Elizabeth, he conspired with others to rob those two daughters of their right, and to  
give the Crown to Lady JANE, that Queen of nine days, whom he, with others,  
ordered to be proclaimed. Confined, notwithstanding his many monstrous crimes,  
merely to the palace of Lambeth, he, in requital of the Queen's lenity, plotted with  
traitors in the pay of France to overset her government. Brought, at last, to trial and to  
condemnation as a heretic, he professed himself ready to recant. He was respited for  
six weeks, during which time he signed six different forms of recantation, each more  
ample than the former. He declared that the Protestant religion was false; that the  
Catholic religion was the only true one; that he now believed in all the doctrines of the  
Catholic Church; that he had been a horrid blasphemer against the sacrament; that he  
was unworthy of forgiveness; that he prayed the People, the Queen and the POPE, to  
have pity on, and to pray for his wretched soul; and that he had made and signed this  
declaration without fear, and without hope of favour, and for the discharge of his con  
science, and as a warning to others. It was a question in the Queen's council, whether  
he should be pardoned, as other recanters had been; but it was resolved, that his  
crimes were so enormous that it would be unjust to let him escape; to which might  
have been added, that it could have done the Catholic Church no honour to see  
reconciled to it a wretch covered with robberies, perjuries, treasons and bloodshed.  
Brought, therefore, to the public reading of his recantation, on his way to the stake;  
seeing the pile ready, now finding that he must die, and carrying in his breast all his  
malignity undiminished, he recanted his recantation, thrust into the fire the hand that  
had signed it, and thus expired, protesting against that very religion in which, only  
nine hours before, he had called God to witness that he firmly believed!  
And Mary is to be called the "Bloody", because she put to death monsters of  
iniquity like this! It is, surely, time to do justice to the memory of this calumniated  
Queen; and not to do it by halves, I must, contrary to my intention, employ part of the  
next Number in giving the remainder of her history.  
END OF VOLUME 14  
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