FOXE AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION, c1539-1587
Collected Manuscript Sources from the British Library, London
Publisher's Note
This microfilm project brings together letters, tracts, treatises, sermons and other papers of John Foxe, the Protestant clergyman and martyrologist.
John Foxe (1516-1587) was born in Boston, Lincolnshire and educated at Oxford University. After the accession of Queen Mary I to the throne he went abroad remaining there until 1559 when Elizabeth I became Queen. He was ordained in 1560 and made prebendary at Salisbury cathedral in 1563. By the 1570’s he had become a favourite of the Queen and her principal minister, William Cecil, Lord Burghley.
Included in this microfilm collection are Foxe’s writings on religious intolerance in England with letters addressed to Queen Elizabeth and other major figures of the time. There are also letters extracted from his famous work Acts and Monuments of These Latter and Perilous Days (popularly known as The Book of Martyrs) published in 1563 and vividly depicting Protestant persecution and atrocities committed. It was to shape popular opinion about Catholicism for at least a century. There are also, among many other fascinating documents, proposals for a revised Canon Law which had been devised during the reign of Henry VIII, Foxe’s account of John Wicliffe and his followers, antipapastical treatises and sermons.
The papers also contain much correspondence from prominent reformers and martyrs such as Hugh Latymer, Bishop of Worcester, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Cox, Bishop of Ely, Thomas Bentham, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield and John Knox.
Included also are letters and prayers and confessions written by condemned Protestants before their execution, letters of Lady Jane Grey, John Bradford, Cardinal Pole, Stephen Gardiner, Edward Foxe and Lollards.
This collection of John Foxe’s papers will prove a hugely useful resource to scholars of the sixteenth century who wish to study the early stages of the English monarchy’s separation from Rome and follow the ensuing struggles for power.
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