John Foxe

John Foxe (1516–April 8, 1587) is remembered as the author of the famous Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

Education and Resignation from Oxford

Foxe was born at Boston, in Lincolnshire, England. (In 1551, one Henry Foxe, a merchant and possible relative, became mayor of that town.) In about 1534, at the age of sixteen, John Foxe entered Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was the pupil of John Harding or Hawarden, a fellow of the college. (Hawarden was perhaps a family friend; he had become rector of Coningsby in 1533, and Foxe's mother, her husband having died when Foxe was young, had married Richard Melton, a yeoman of Coningsby. Three decades later Foxe made a dedication to Hawarden in one of his books, thanking Hawarden for enabling his education.) At Brasenose Foxe shared rooms with Alexander Nowell, afterwards dean of St Paul's Cathedral. A year later he was admitted to Magdalen College School, where at the advanced age of seventeen he may either have been improving his knowledge of Latin or acting as a junior teacher. He progressed on to Magdalen College as a probationer fellow in July 1538, becoming a full fellow the following July.

Related Topics:
Boston - Lincolnshire - England - Merchant - Mayor - Brasenose College, Oxford - John Harding - Rector - Coningsby - Dedication - Alexander Nowell - Dean - St Paul's Cathedral - Magdalen College School - Magdalen College - Probationer fellow - Fellow

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Foxe took his bachelor's degree on July 17, 1537 and his master's degree in July of 1543. He was lecturer of logic in 1539-40. He wrote several Latin plays on biblical subjects, of which the best, De Christo triumphante or Christus triumphans, an allegorical, Latin verse drama concerning the history of the church, was printed in London in 1551 and by Oporinus in Basel in March, 1556. It was performed at Cambridge and probably Oxford in the 1560s; it was translated into French in 1562 and English in 1579. The latter translation was produced by Richard Day, son of the printer, John Day or Daye, who published Foxe's Actes and Monuments. Foxe's earliest extant literary creation is Titus et Gesippus (w. 1544), a Latin comedy based on Boccaccio.

Related Topics:
Bachelor's degree - Master's degree - Lecturer - Logic - Latin - Oporinus - Richard Day - John Day - ''Actes and Monuments'' - Boccaccio

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Foxe resigned from his college in 1545, referring to it as a prison in a letter he wrote that year. At some point during his time at Oxford he had become an evangelical, meaning he subscribed to Protestant beliefs not sanctioned by the Church of England under Henry VIII. (Other evangelicals of future renown at Magdalen then were Henry Bull, Laurence Humphrey, Thomas Cooper, and Robert Crowley.) It was said that Foxe refused to conform to the rules for regular attendance at mass and other services. Foxe was also obliged to take holy orders by Michaelmas of 1545, after a year of obligatory regency (public lecturing), and as he dissented from the requirement of clerical celibacy--which he described in letters to friends as self-castration and circumcision (BL, Lansdowne MS 388, fols. 80v, 117r)--this is probably the primary reason for his resignation.

Related Topics:
Evangelical - Protestant - Church of England - Henry VIII - Magdalen - Henry Bull - Laurence Humphrey - Thomas Cooper - Robert Crowley - Mass - Holy orders - Michaelmas - Obligatory regency - Celibacy

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The customary statement that Foxe was expelled from his fellowship is based on the untrustworthy biography attributed to his son, Samuel Foxe, but there is evidence that Foxe was pressured out of the college in a general purge of its evangelical members. College records state that he resigned of his own accord and ex honesta causa, but there exists in Foxe's papers a draft of a letter to Owen Oglethorpe, president of Magdalen, in which Foxe protests against the charges of irreverence and of belonging to a new religion, which were brought against him by some of the college's masters who are not named by Foxe (BL, Lansdowne MS 388, fols. 53r?58r). Foxe says these masters were persecuting other fellows, including Thomas Cooper, later bishop of Lincoln and Winchester under Elizabeth, and Robert Crowley, a lifelong friend and associate of Foxe's who also left the college at this time. Foxe's letter is printed in Pratt's edition (vol. i. Appendix, pp. 58-61); see also J. F. Mozley's biography of Foxe.

Related Topics:
Fellowship - Biography - Samuel Foxe - Owen Oglethorpe - Thomas Cooper - Robert Crowley

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Once determined to leave Oxford, Foxe looked to other evangelicals for help but received only advice and a little money. Hugh Latimer invited Foxe to live with him, but Foxe's best prospect was employment as tutor in the household of Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near Stratford-on-Avon. Here Foxe married Agnes Randall on February 3, 1547. Shortly after marrying, Foxe left the Lucys. The reasons for his departure are not known. According to short remembrance written by Simeon Foxe in 1611 and appended to the 1641 Actes and Monuments, Foxe stayed with the Randalls in Coventry before returning to his parents' in Coningsby. Foxe's stay there was brief, perhaps because, as Simeon states, Foxe's step-father was Catholic and their relationship was difficult. On the other hand, a 1547 publication of Foxe's contains a dedication to his step-father, thanking him for his help.

Related Topics:
Hugh Latimer - Thomas Lucy - Charlecote - Stratford-on-Avon - Simeon Foxe - Coventry

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