1570-Fox's Book of Martyrs-The Life+ Story of Dr. Nicholas Ridley-Bishop London

Description: Welcome to The Bible Leaf DepotOur Business is solely about sellingRARE BIBLE LEAVES!!! We annually sell hundreds of 15th, 16th and 17th century Bible Leaves. KJV,Geneva, Great, Bishops, Matthews and even early Latin and German Bible Leaves. And small quantities of other Rare leaves-I also sell individual sermons from the 1500's, 1600's, 1700's and 1800's. If you need a particular Leaf-let me know. For Buy it Now: A rare 2nd Edition-1570 Leaf from Acts and Monuments or Foxes Book of Martyrs- This Leaf includes information : The Life and Story of Dr. Nicholas Ridley-Bishop of London-Martyr During the Reign of Queen Mary the October, 1555. The Bishop was martyred on October 16, 1555. Printed in the Acts and Monuments 1570 London-2nd Edition- . Folio-14 1/2" by 9 1/2" from Foxe's Book of Martyrs-The Actes and Monuments-2 Column text with Black letter. Leaf is numbered 1895/1896 during the year 1555. Many notes and information added in Roman Font. Condition- Nice Full Leaf -some browning-spot or two- Please view the photos -They are actual of what you will receive.Will come with nice COA and a copy of the title page-453 years old!!!!! Nicholas Ridley (martyr) The Right Reverend Nicholas RidleyBishop of London and WestminsterChurchChurch of EnglandInstalled1550Term ended1553PredecessorEdmund Bonner, Bishop of LondonSuccessorEdmund Bonner, Bishop of LondonOther post(s)Bishop of Rochester (1547–1550)OrdersConsecration5 September 1547 by Henry HolbeachPersonal detailsBornNicholas Ridley c. 1500 South Tynedale, Northumberland, EnglandDied16 October 1555 Oxford, Oxfordshire, EnglandDenominationAnglicanismSainthoodFeast day16 OctoberVenerated inAnglican CommunionTitle as SaintOxford Martyr Nicholas Ridley (c. 1500 – 16 October 1555) was an English Bishop of London (the only bishop called "Bishop of London and Westminster"[1]). Ridley was one of the Oxford Martyrs burned at the stake during the Marian Persecutions, for his teachings and his support of Lady Jane Grey. He is remembered with a commemoration in the calendar of saints (with Hugh Latimer) in some parts of the Anglican Communion (Church of England) on 16 October.[2] Early years and advancement (c.1500–50) Ridley came from a prominent family in Tynedale, Northumberland. He was the second son of Christopher Ridley, first cousin to Lancelot Ridley and grew up in Unthank Hall from the old House of Unthank located on the site of an ancient watch tower or pele tower. As a boy, Ridley was educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, and Pembroke College, Cambridge,[3] where he proceeded to Master of Arts in 1525.[4][5] Soon afterward he was ordained as a priest and went to the Sorbonne, in Paris, for further education. After returning to England around 1529, he became the senior proctor of Cambridge University in 1534. Around that time there was significant debate about the Pope's supremacy. Ridley was well versed on Biblical hermeneutics, and through his arguments the university came up with the following resolution: "That the Bishop of Rome had no more authority and jurisdiction derived to him from God, in this kingdom of England, than any other foreign bishop." He graduated B.D. in 1537 and was then appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, to serve as one of his chaplains. In April 1538, Cranmer made him vicar of Herne, in Kent.[6] In 1540–1, he was made one of the King's Chaplains, and was also presented with a prebendal stall in Canterbury Cathedral. In 1540 he was made Master of Pembroke College and in 1541 was awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity.[7] In 1543 he was accused of heresy, but he was able to beat the charge. Cranmer had resolved to support the English Reformation by gradually replacing the old guard in his ecclesiastical province with men who followed the new thinking.[8] Ridley was made the Bishop of Rochester in 1547, and shortly after coming to office, directed that the altars in the churches of his diocese should be removed, and tables put in their place to celebrate the Lord's Supper. In 1548 he helped Cranmer compile the Book of Common Prayer and in 1549 he was one of the commissioners who investigated Bishops Stephen Gardiner and Edmund Bonner. He concurred that they should be removed. John Ponet took Ridley's former position. Incumbent conservatives were uprooted and replaced with reformers.[9] When Ridley was appointed to the see of London by letters patent on 1 April 1550, he was called the "Bishop of London and Westminster" because the Diocese of London had just re-absorbed the dissolved Diocese of Westminster.[1] Vestments controversy (1550–3) Ridley played a major part in the vestments controversy. John Hooper, having been exiled during King Henry's reign, returned to England in 1548 from the churches in Zürich that had been reformed by Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger in a highly iconoclastic fashion. When Hooper was invited to give a series of Lenten sermons before the king in February 1550, he spoke against Cranmer's 1549 ordinal whose oath mentioned "all saints" and required newly elected bishops and those attending the ordination ceremony to wear a cope and surplice. In Hooper's view, these requirements were vestiges of Judaism and Roman Catholicism, which had no biblical warrant for Christians since they were not used in the early Christian church.[10] Heinrich Bullinger, a major influence on John Hooper, Ridley's opponent in the vestments controversy. Summoned to answer to the Privy Council and archbishop—who were primarily concerned with Hooper's willingness to accept the royal supremacy, which was also part of the oath for newly ordained clergy—Hooper evidently made sufficient reassurances, as he was soon appointed to the bishopric of Gloucester. Hooper declined the office, however, because of the required vestments and oath by the saints. The king accepted Hooper's position, but the Privy Council did not. Called before them on 15 May 1550, a compromise was reached. Vestments were to be considered a matter of adiaphora, or Res Indifferentes ("things indifferent", as opposed to an article of faith), and Hooper could be ordained without them at his discretion, but he must allow that others could wear them. Hooper passed confirmation of the new office again before the king and council on 20 July 1550 when the issue was raised again, and Cranmer was instructed that Hooper was not to be charged "with an oath burdensome to his conscience".[10] Cranmer assigned Ridley to perform the consecration, and Ridley refused to do anything but follow the form of the ordinal as it had been prescribed by Parliament. Ridley, it seems likely, had some particular objection to Hooper. It has been suggested that Henrician exiles like Hooper, who had experienced some of the more radically reformed churches on the continent, were at odds with English clergy who had accepted and never left the established church. John Henry Primus also notes that on 24 July 1550, the day after receiving instructions for Hooper's unique consecration, the church of the Austin Friars in London had been granted to Jan Laski for use as a Stranger church. This was to be a designated place of worship for Continental Protestant refugees, a church with forms and practices that had taken reforms much further than Ridley would have liked. This development—the use of a London church virtually outside Ridley's jurisdiction—was one that Hooper had had a hand in.[11] The Privy Council reiterated its position, and Ridley responded in person, agreeing that vestments are indifferent but making a compelling argument that the monarch may require indifferent things without exception. The council became divided in opinion, and the issue dragged on for months without resolution. Hooper now insisted that vestments were not indifferent, since they obscured the priesthood of Christ by encouraging hypocrisy and superstition. Warwick disagreed, emphasising that the king must be obeyed in things indifferent, and he pointed to St Paul's concessions to Jewish traditions in the early church. Finally, an acrimonious debate with Ridley went against Hooper. Ridley's position centred on maintaining order and authority; not the vestments themselves, Hooper's primary concern.[10] Hooper–Ridley debateJohn Hooper clashed with Ridley as he advocated more radical reforms. Portrait by Henry Bryan Hall, 1839. In a Latin letter dated 3 October 1550, Hooper laid out his argument contra usum vestium.[12] With Ridley's reply (in English), it marks the first written representation of a split in the English Reformation. Hooper's argument is that vestments should not be used as they are not indifferent, nor is their use supported by scripture, a point he takes as self-evident. He contends that church practices must either have express biblical support or be things indifferent, approval for which is implied by scripture. Furthermore, an indifferent thing, if used, causes no profit or loss. Ridley objected in his response, saying that indifferent things do have profitable effects, which is the only reason they are used. Failing to distinguish between conditions for indifferent things in general and the church's use of indifferent things, Hooper then all but excludes the possibility of anything being indifferent in the four conditions he sets: 1) An indifferent thing has either an express justification in scripture or is implied by it, finding its origin and foundation in scripture. Hooper cites Romans 14:23 (whatever is not faith is sin), Romans 10:17 (faith comes from hearing the word of God), and Matthew 15:13 (everything not "planted" by God will be "rooted up") to argue that indifferent things must be done in faith, and since what cannot be proved from scripture is not of faith, indifferent things must be proved from scripture, which is both necessary and sufficient authority, as opposed to tradition. Hooper maintains that priestly garb distinguishing clergy from laity is not indicated by scripture; there is no mention of it in the New Testament as being in use in the early church, and the use of priestly clothing in the Old Testament is a Hebrew practice, a type or foreshadowing that finds its antitype in Christ, who abolishes the old order and recognises the spiritual equality, or priesthood, of all Christians. The historicity of these claims is further supported by Hooper with a reference to Polydore Vergil's De Inventoribus Rerum. In response, Ridley rejected Hooper's insistence on biblical origins and countered Hooper's interpretations of his chosen biblical texts. He points out that many non-controversial practices are not mentioned or implied in scripture. Ridley denies that early church practices are normative for the present situation, and he links such primitivist arguments with the Anabaptists. Joking that Hooper's reference to Christ's nakedness on the cross is as insignificant as the clothing King Herod put Christ in and "a jolly argument" for the Adamites, Ridley does not dispute Hooper's main typological argument, but neither does he accept that vestments are necessarily or exclusively identified with Israel and the Roman church. On Hooper's point about the priesthood of all believers, Ridley says it does not follow from this doctrine that all Christians must wear the same clothes. 2) An indifferent thing must be left to individual discretion; if required, it is no longer indifferent. For Ridley, on matters of indifference, one must defer conscience to the authorities of the church, or else "thou showest thyself a disordered person, disobedient, as [a] contemner of lawful authority, and a wounder of thy weak brother his conscience." For him, the debate was finally about legitimate authority, not the merits and demerits of vestments themselves. He contended that it is only accidental that the compulsory ceases to be indifferent; the degeneration of a practice into non-indifference can be corrected without throwing out the practice. Things are not, "because they have been abused, to be taken away, but to be reformed and amended, and so kept still." 3) An indifferent thing's usefulness must be demonstrated and not introduced arbitrarily. For this point, Hooper cites 1 Corinthians 14 and 2 Corinthians 13. As it contradicts the first point above, Primus contends that Hooper must now refer to indifferent things in the church and earlier meant indifferent things in general, in the abstract. Regardless, the apparent contradiction was seized by Ridley and undoubtedly hurt Hooper's case with the council. 4) Indifferent things must be introduced into the church with apostolic and evangelical lenity, not violent tyranny. In making such an inflammatory, risky statement (he later may have called his opponents "papists" in a part of his argument that is lost), Hooper may not have been suggesting England was tyrannical but that Rome was—and that England could become like Rome. Ridley warned Hooper of the implications of an attack on English ecclesiastical and civil authority and of the consequences of radical individual liberties, while also reminding him that it was Parliament that established the "Book of Common Prayer in the church of England". In closing, Hooper asks that the dispute be resolved by church authorities without looking to civil authorities for support—although the monarch was the head of both the church and the state. This hint of a plea for a separation of church and state would later be elaborated by Thomas Cartwright, but for Hooper, although the word of God was the highest authority, the state could still impose upon men's consciences (such as requiring them not to be Roman Catholic) when it had a biblical warrant. Moreover, Hooper himself addressed the civil magistrates, suggesting that the clergy supporting vestments were a threat to the state, and he declared his willingness to be martyred for his cause. Ridley, by contrast, responds with humour, calling this "a magnifical promise set forth with a stout style". He invites Hooper to agree that vestments are indifferent, not to condemn them as sinful, and then he will ordain him even if he wears street clothes to the ceremony.[10] Outcome of the controversy The weaknesses in Hooper's argument, Ridley's laconic and temperate rejoinder, and Ridley's offer of a compromise no doubt turned the council against Hooper's inflexible convictions when he did not accept it. Heinrich Bullinger, Pietro Martire Vermigli, and Martin Bucer, while agreeing with Hooper's views, ceased to support him for the pragmatic sake of unity and slower reform. Only Jan Laski remained a constant ally. Some time in mid-December 1550, Hooper was put under house arrest, during which time he wrote and published A godly Confession and protestation of the Christian faith. Because of this publication, his persistent nonconformism, and violations of the terms of his house arrest, Hooper was placed in Thomas Cranmer's custody at Lambeth Palace for two weeks by the Privy Council on 13 January 1551. Hooper was then sent to Fleet Prison by the council, who made that decision on 27 January. On 15 February, Hooper submitted to consecration in vestments in a letter to Cranmer. He was consecrated Bishop of Gloucester on 8 March 1551, and shortly thereafter, preached before the king in vestments.[10] Downfall (1553–5)The death of Edward VI, here as Prince of Wales, brought about Ridley's downfall. On 2 February 1553 Cranmer was ordered to appoint John Knox, a Scot, as vicar of All Hallows, Bread Street in London, placing him under the authority of Ridley. Knox returned to London in order to deliver a sermon before the king and the court during Lent, after which he refused to take his assigned post.[13] That same year, Ridley pleaded with Edward VI to give some of his empty palaces over to the city to house homeless women and children. One such foundation was Bridewell Royal Hospital, which is today known as King Edward's School, Witley.[14] Edward VI became seriously ill from tuberculosis and in mid-June the councillors were told that he did not have long to live. They set to work to convince several judges to put on the throne Lady Jane Grey, Edward's cousin, instead of Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon and a Roman Catholic. On 17 June 1553 the king made his will noting Jane would succeed him, contravening the Third Succession Act.[15] Ridley signed the letters patent giving the English throne to Lady Jane Grey. On 9 July 1553 he preached a sermon at St Paul's cross in which he affirmed that the princesses Mary and Elizabeth were bastards. By mid-July, there were serious provincial revolts in Mary's favour and support for Jane in the council fell. As Mary was proclaimed queen, Ridley, Jane's father, the Duke of Suffolk and others were imprisoned. Ridley was sent to the Tower of London.[16] Through February 1554 Jane and her leading supporters were executed. After that, there was time to deal with the religious leaders of the English Reformation and so on 8 March 1554 the Privy Council ordered Cranmer, Ridley, and Hugh Latimer to be transferred to Bocardo prison in Oxford to await trial for heresy. The trial of Latimer and Ridley started shortly after Cranmer's with John Jewel acting as notary to Ridley. Their verdicts came almost immediately: they were to be burned at the stake.[17] Death and legacyRidley being burned at the stake, together with Hugh Latimer. From John Foxe's Book of Martyrs. The sentence was carried out on 16 October 1555 in Oxford. Cranmer was taken to a tower to watch the proceedings. Ridley burned extremely slowly and suffered a great deal: his brother-in-law had put more tinder on the pyre in order to speed his death, but this only caused his lower parts to burn. Latimer is supposed to have said to Ridley, "Be of good comfort, and play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." This was quoted in Foxe's Book of Martyrs.[18] A metal cross in a cobbled patch of road in Broad Street, Oxford, marks the site. Eventually Ridley and Latimer were seen as martyrs for their support of a Church of England independent from the Roman Catholic Church. Along with Thomas Cranmer, they are known as the Oxford Martyrs. In the Victorian era, his death was commemorated by the Martyrs' Memorial, located near the site of his execution. As well as being a monument to the English Reformation and the doctrines of the Protestant and Reformed doctrines, the memorial is a landmark of the 19th century, a monument stoutly resisted by John Keble, John Henry Newman and others of the Tractarian Movement and Oxford Movement. Profoundly alarmed at the Romewardizing intrusions and efforts at realignment that the movement was attempting to bring into the Church of England, Protestant and Reformed Anglican clergymen raised the funds for erecting the monument, with its highly anti-Roman Catholic inscription, a memorial to over three hundred years of history and reformation. As a result, the monument was built 300 years after the events it commemorates.[19] Stained glass window depicting Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, the Oxford Martyrs In 1881, Ridley Hall in Cambridge, England, was founded in his memory for the training of Anglican priests. Ridley College, a private University-preparatory school located in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, was founded in his honour in 1889. Also named after him is Ridley College (Melbourne), an evangelical Anglican theological college in Australia, founded in 1910. There is a Church of England church dedicated to him in Welling, southeast London. The words spoken to Ridley by Latimer at their execution are used. Ridley and Latimer are remembered with a commemoration in the Calendar of saints in some parts of the Anglican Communion on 16 October.[20] John Foxe For other people named John Fox, see John Fox (disambiguation).John FoxeBorn1516 Boston, Lincolnshire, EnglandDied1587 London, EnglandOccupationClergyman, authorGenreChurch historyLiterary movementPuritanJohn Foxe (1516/17[1] – 18 April 1587) was an English historian and martyrologist, the author of Actes and Monuments (popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs), an account of Christian martyrs throughout Western history but emphasizing the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the fourteenth century through the reign of Mary I. Widely owned and read by English Puritans, the book helped mould British popular opinion about the Catholic Church for several centuries.[2]Contents [hide] 1Education2Resignation from Oxford3In London under Edward VI4Marian exile5Return to England6Actes and Monuments6.1First edition6.2Second edition6.3Third and fourth editions6.4Accuracy7Life under Elizabeth I7.1Salisbury and London7.2Death and legacy8Personality9Historical reputation10See also11Notes12ReferencesEducation[edit]Foxe was born in Boston, in Lincolnshire, England, of a middlingly prominent family[3] and seems to have been an unusually studious and devout child.[4] In about 1534, when he was about sixteen, he entered Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was the pupil of John Hawarden (or Harding), a fellow of the college.[5] In 1535 Foxe was admitted to Magdalen College School, where he may either have been improving his Latin or acting as a junior instructor. He became a probationer fellow in July 1538 and a full fellow the following July.Foxe took his bachelor's degree on 17 July 1537, his master's degree in July 1543, and was lecturer in logic, 1539–40.[6] A series of letters in Foxe's handwriting dated to 1544–45, shows Foxe to be "a man of friendly disposition and warm sympathies, deeply religious, an ardent student, zealous in making acquaintance with scholars."[7] By the time he was twenty-five, he had read the Latin and Greek fathers, the schoolmen, the canon law, and had "acquired no mean skill in the Hebrew language."[8]Resignation from Oxford[edit]Foxe resigned from his college in 1545 after becoming a Protestant and thereby subscribing to beliefs condemned by the Church of England under Henry VIII.[9][citation needed] After a year of "obligatory regency" (public lecturing), Foxe would have been obliged to take holy orders by Michaelmas 1545, and the primary reason for his resignation was probably his opposition to clerical celibacy, which he described in letters to friends as self-castration.[10] Foxe may have been forced from the college in a general purge of its Protestant members although college records state that he resigned of his own accord and "ex honesta causa".[11] Foxe's change of religious opinion may have temporarily broken his relationship with his stepfather and may even have put his life in danger. Foxe personally witnessed the burning of William Cowbridge in September 1538.[12]After being forced to abandon what might have been a promising academic career, Foxe experienced a period of dire need. Hugh Latimer invited Foxe to live with him, but Foxe eventually became a tutor in the household of Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near Stratford-on-Avon. Before leaving the Lucys, Foxe married Agnes Randall on 3 February 1547.[13] They had six children.[14]In London under Edward VI[edit]Foxe's prospects, and those of the Protestant cause generally, improved after the accession of Edward VI in January 1547 and the formation of a Privy Council dominated by pro-reform Protestants. In the middle of or at the end of 1547, Foxe moved to London and probably lived in Stepney. There, he completed three translations of Protestant sermons published by the "stout Protestant" Hugh Singleton.[15] During this period Foxe also found a patron in Mary Fitzroy, Duchess of Richmond, who hired him as tutor to the orphan children of her brother, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, a Catholic who had been executed for treason in January 1547.[16] (The children were Thomas, who would become the fourth duke of Norfolk and a valuable friend of Foxe's; Jane, later Countess of Westmorland; Henry, later earl of Northampton; and their cousin Charles, who would later command the English fleet against the Spanish Armada.) Foxe lived in the duchess's London household at Mountjoy House and later at Reigate Castle, and the duchess's patronage "facilitated Foxe's entry into the ranks of England's Protestant elite."[17] During his stay at Reigate, Foxe helped suppress a cult that had arisen around the shrine of the Virgin Mary at Ouldsworth, which had been credited with miraculous healing powers.[18]Foxe was ordained deacon by Nicholas Ridley on 24 June 1550, and his circle of friends, associates, and supporters included John Hooper, William Turner, John Rogers, William Cecil, and most importantly John Bale, who was to become a close friend and "certainly encouraged, very probably guided, Foxe in the composition of his first martyrology.[17] From 1548 to 1551, Foxe brought out one tract opposing the death penalty for adultery and another supporting ecclesiastical excommunication of those who he thought "veiled ambition under the cloak of Protestantism". He also worked unsuccessfully to prevent the two burnings for religion that occurred during the reign of Edward VI.[19]Marian exile[edit]On the accession of Mary I in July 1553, Foxe lost his tutorship when the children's grandfather, the Duke of Norfolk was released from prison. Foxe walked warily as befitted one who had published Protestant books in his own name. As the political climate worsened, Foxe believed himself personally threatened by Bishop Stephen Gardiner. Just ahead of officers sent to arrest him, he sailed with his pregnant wife from Ipswich to Nieuwpoort.[20] He then traveled to Antwerp, Rotterdam, Frankfurt and Strasbourg, which he reached by July 1554. In Strasbourg Foxe published a Latin history of the Christian persecutions, the draft of which he had brought from England and "which became the first shadowy draft of his Acts and Monuments."[21]In the autumn of 1554, Foxe moved to Frankfurt, where he served as a preacher for the English church ministering to refugees in the city. There, he was unwillingly drawn into a bitter theological controversy. One faction favored the church polity and liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer while the other advocated Reformed models promoted by John Calvin's Genevan church. The latter group, led by John Knox, was supported by Foxe; the former was led by Richard Cox. (In other words, the exiles were divided into Knoxians and Coxians.) Eventually, Knox. who seems to have acted with more magnanimity, was expelled, and in the fall of 1555, Foxe and about twenty others also left Frankfurt.[22] Although Foxe clearly favored Knox, he was irenic by temperament and expressed his disgust at "the violence of the warring factions."[23]Moving to Basel, Foxe worked with his fellow countrymen John Bale and Lawrence Humphrey at the drudgery of proofreading. (Educated Englishmen were noted for their learning, industry and honesty and "would also be the last persons to quarrel with their bread and butter." No knowledge of German or French was required because the English tended to socialise with one another and could communicate with scholars in Latin.)[24]Foxe also completed and had printed a religious drama, Christus Triumphans (1556), in Latin verse. Yet despite receiving occasional financial contributions from English merchants on the continent, Foxe seems to have lived very close to the margin and been "wretchedly poor."[25]When Foxe received reports from England about the ongoing religious persecution there, he wrote a pamphlet urging the English nobility to use their influence with the queen to halt it. Foxe feared that the appeal would be useless, and his fears proved correct.[26] When Knox attacked Mary Stuart in his now famous The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, Foxe apparently criticized Knox's "rude vehemency" although their friendship seems to have remained unimpaired.[27]Return to England[edit]A page from the first edition of Actes and Monuments, also known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, published in 1563.After the death of Mary I in 1558, Foxe was in no hurry to return home, and he waited to see if religious changes instituted by her successor, Elizabeth I, would take root. Foxe was also so poor that he was unable to travel with his family until money was sent to him.[28] Back in England, he seems to have lived for ten years at Aldgate, London, in the house of his former pupil, Thomas Howard, now Fourth Duke of Norfolk.[29] Foxe quickly became associated with John Day the printer and published works of religious controversy while working on a new martyrology that would eventually become the Actes and Monuments.Foxe was ordained a priest by his friend Edmund Grindal, now Bishop of London, but he "was something of a puritan, and like many of the exiles, had scruples about wearing the clerical vestments laid down in the queen's injunctions of 1559." Many of his friends eventually conformed, but Foxe was "more stubborn or single-minded." Some tried to find him preferments in the new regime, but it "was not easy to help a man of so singularly unworldly a nature, who scorned to use his powerful friendships to advance himself."[30]Actes and Monuments[edit]Foxe began his Book of Martyrs in 1552, during the reign of Edward VI, with the Marian Persecutions still in the future. In 1554, while still in exile, Foxe published in Latin at Strasbourg the first shadow of his great book, emphasising the persecution of the English Lollards during the fifteenth century. But as word of the contemporary English persecution made its way to the continent, Foxe began to collect materials to continue his story to the present. He published the first true Latin edition of his famous book at Basel in August 1559, although the segment dealing with the Marian martyrs was "no more than a fragment."[31]Of course, it was difficult to write contemporary English history while living (as he later said) "in the far parts of Germany, where few friends, no conference, [and] small information could be had."[32] Nevertheless, Foxe who had left England poor and unknown, returned only poor. He had gained "a substantial reputation" through his Latin work.[33]First edition[edit]On 20 March 1563, Foxe published the first English edition of the Actes and Monuments from the press of John Day.[34] It was a "gigantic folio volume" of about 1800 pages, about three times the length of the 1559 Latin book.[35] As is typical for the period, the full title was a paragraph long and is abbreviated by scholars as Acts and Monuments,[36] although the book was popularly known then, as it is now, as Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Publication of the book made Foxe instantly famous—"England's first literary celebrity"—although because there were then no royalties, Foxe remained as poor as ever although the book sold for more than ten shillings, three weeks' pay for a skilled craftsman.[37]Second edition[edit]Actes and Monuments was immediately attacked by Catholics such as Thomas Harding, Thomas Stapleton, and Nicholas Harpsfield.[38] In the next generation, Robert Parsons, an English Jesuit, also struck at Foxe in A Treatise of Three Conversions of England (1603–04). Harding, in the spirit of the age, called Actes and Monuments ' "that huge dunghill of your stinking martyrs," full of a thousand lies'.[39]Intending to strengthen his book against his critics, and being flooded by new material brought to light by the publication of the first edition,[40] Foxe put together a second edition in 1570 and where the charges of his critics had been reasonably accurate, Foxe removed the offending passages. Where he could rebut the charges, "he mounted a vigorous counter-attack, seeking to crush his opponent under piles of documents."[41] Even though he deleted material that had been included in the first edition, the second edition was nearly double the size of the first, "two gigantic folio volumes, with 2300 very large pages" of double-columned text.[42]The edition was well received by the English church, and the upper house of the convocation of Canterbury meeting in 1571, ordered that a copy of the Bishop's Bible and "that full history entitled Monuments of Martyrs" be installed in every cathedral church and that church officials place copies in their houses for the use of servants and visitors. The decision was of certain benefit to Foxe's printer Day because he had taken great financial risks printing such a mammoth work.[43]Third and fourth editions[edit]Dual martyrdom by burning, 1558; from a 1641 edition of Foxe.Foxe published a third edition in 1576, but it was virtually a reprint of the second, although printed on inferior paper and in smaller type.[44] The fourth edition, published in 1583, the last in Foxe's lifetime, had larger type and better paper and consisted of "two volumes of about two thousand folio pages in double columns." Nearly four times the length of the Bible, the fourth edition was "the most physically imposing, complicated, and technically demanding English book of its era. It seems safe to say that it is the largest and most complicated book to appear during the first two or three centuries of English printing history."[45] The title page included the poignant request that the author "desireth thee, good reader, to help him with thy prayer."[46]Accuracy[edit]Foxe based his accounts of martyrs before the early modern period on previous writers, including Eusebius, Bede, Matthew Paris, and many others. Foxe's own contribution was his compilation of the English martyrs from the period of the Lollards through the persecution of Mary I. Here Foxe had primary sources of all kinds to draw on: episcopal registers, reports of trials, and the testimony of eyewitnesses, a remarkable range of sources for English historical writing of the period.[47]Foxe's material is more accurate when he deals with his own period, although it is selectively presented, and the book is not an impartial account. Sometimes Foxe copied documents verbatim; sometimes he adapted them to his own use. Although both he and his contemporary readers were more credulous than most moderns, Foxe presented "lifelike and vivid pictures of the manners and feelings of the day, full of details that could never have been invented by a forger."[48] Foxe's method of using his sources "proclaims the honest man, the sincere seeker after truth."[49]Foxe often treated his material casually, and any reader "must be prepared to meet plenty of small errors and inconsistencies."[50] Furthermore, Foxe did not hold to later notions of neutrality or objectivity. He made unambiguous side glosses on his text, such as "Mark the apish pageants of these popelings" and "This answer smelleth of forging and crafty packing",[51] as Foxe's age was one of strong language s well as of cruel deeds.[52] The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica went so far as to accuse Foxe of "wilful falsification of evidence."[53] Nevertheless, Foxe is "factually detailed and preserves much firsthand material on the English Reformation unobtainable elsewhere."[54] According to J.F. Mozley, Foxe presented "lifelike and vivid pictures of the manners and feelings of the day, full of details that could never have been invented by a forger."[48]Life under Elizabeth I[edit]Salisbury and London[edit]Foxe had dedicated Acts and Monuments to the queen,[55] and on 22 May 1563, he was appointed prebend of Shipton in Salisbury Cathedral, in recognition of his championship of the English church.[56] Foxe never visited the cathedral or performed any duties associated with the position except to appoint a vicar, William Masters, a highly educated fellow Protestant and former Marian exile. Foxe's inaction as a canon of the cathedral led him to him being declared contumacious, and he was charged with failing to give a tithe for repairs to the cathedral. Perhaps his poverty made him unwilling to spare the time or money to make visits or contributions. In any case, he retained the position until his death.[57]By 1565, Foxe had been caught up in the vestments controversy led at that time by his associate Crowley. Foxe's name was on a list of "godly preachers which have utterly forsaken Antichrist and all his Romish rags" that was presented to Lord Robert Dudley some time between 1561 and 1564.[58] He was also one of the twenty clergymen who on 20 March 1565 petitioned to be allowed to choose not to wear vestments; but unlike many of the others, Foxe did not have a London benefice to lose when Archbishop Parker enforced conformity. Rather, when Crowley lost his position at St Giles-without-Cripplegate, Foxe may have preached in his stead.[59]At some point before 1569, Foxe left Norfolk's house and moved to his own on Grub Street. Perhaps his move was motivated by his concerns about Norfolk's exceptionally poor judgment in attempting to marry Mary Stuart, which led to his imprisonment in the Tower in 1569 and his condemnation in 1572 following the Ridolfi Plot. Although Foxe had written Norfolk "a remarkably frank letter" about the injudiciousness of his course, after Norfolk's condemnation, he and Alexander Nowell ministered to the prisoner until his execution, which Foxe attended, on 2 June 1572.[60]In 1570, at the request of Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London, Foxe preached the Good Friday sermon at Paul's Cross. This lofty exposition of the Protestant doctrine of redemption and attack on the doctrinal errors of the Roman Catholic Church was enlarged and published that year as A Sermon of Christ Crucified.[61] Another sermon Foxe preached seven years later at Paul's Cross resulted in his denunciation to the Queen by the French ambassador on grounds that Foxe had advocated the right of the Huguenots to take arms against their king. Foxe replied that he had been misunderstood: he had argued only that if the French king permitted no foreign power (the Pope) to rule over him, the French Protestants would immediately lay down their arms.[62]In 1571, Foxe edited an edition of the Anglo-Saxon gospels, in parallel with the Bishops' Bible translation, under the patronage of Archbishop Parker, who was interested in Anglo-Saxon and whose chaplain, John Jocelyn was an Anglo-Saxon scholar. Foxe's introduction argues that the vernacular scripture was an ancient custom in England.[63]Death and legacy[edit]Foxe died on 18 April 1587 and was buried at St. Giles's, Cripplegate. His widow, Agnes, probably died in 1605. Foxe's son, Samuel Foxe (1560–1630) prospered after his father's death and "accumulated a substantial estate." Fortunately for posterity, he also preserved his father's manuscripts, and they are now in the British Library.Personality[edit]Foxe was so bookish that he ruined his health by his persistent study.[64] Yet he had "a genius for friendship," served as a spiritual counselor and was a man of private charity. He even took part in matchmaking.[65] Foxe was so well known as a man of prayer that Francis Drake credited his victory at Cadiz in part to Foxe's praying.[66] Furthermore, Foxe's extreme unworldliness caused others to claim that he had prophetic powers and could heal the sick.[67]Certainly, Foxe had a hatred of cruelty in advance of his age. When a number of Flemish Anabaptists were taken by Elizabeth's government in 1572 and sentenced to be burnt, Foxe first wrote letters to the Queen and her council asking for their lives and then wrote the prisoners themselves (having his Latin draft translated into Flemish) pleading with them to abandon what he considered their theological errors. Foxe even visited the Anabaptists in prison. (The attempted intercession was in vain; two were burnt at Smithfield "in great horror with roaring and crying.")[68]John Day's son Richard, who knew Foxe well, described him in 1607 as an "excellent man... exceeding laborious in his pen... his learning inferior to none of his age and time; for his integrity of life a bright light to as many as knew him, beheld him, and lived with him" [69] Foxe's funeral was accompanied "by crowds of mourners".[70]Historical reputation[edit]After his death, Foxe's Acts and Monuments continued to be published and appreciatively read. John Burrow refers to it as, after the Bible, "the greatest single influence on English Protestant thinking of the late Tudor and early Stuart period."[71]By the end of the seventeenth century, however, the work tended to be abbreviated to include only "the most sensational episodes of torture and death", thus giving to Foxe's work "a lurid quality which was certainly far from the author's intention."[47] Because Foxe was used to attack Catholicism and a rising tide of high-church Anglicanism, the book's credibility was challenged in the early nineteenth century by a number of authors, most importantly, Samuel R. Maitland.[72] In the words of one Catholic Victorian, after Maitland's critique, "no one with any literary pretensions... ventured to quote Foxe as an authority."[73] Further analysis of Maitland's criticism in the twenty-first century has in the words of David Loades, that Maitland "deserves to be treated with genuine, but limited, respect. His demolition of the martyrologist's history of the Waldenses, and of some of his other medieval reconstructions, was accurate up to a point, but he never addressed those parts of the Acts and Monuments where Foxe was at his strongest, and his general conclusion that the work was nothing but a tissue of fabrications and distortions is not supported by modern analysis."[74]It was not until J. F. Mozley published John Foxe and His Book, in 1940. that Foxe's rehabilitation as a historian began, initiating a controversy that has continued to the present.[75] Recently, renewed interest in Foxe as a seminal figure in early modern studies created a demand for a new critical edition of the Actes and Monuments,

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