John Foxe: Encyclopedia II - John Foxe - Marian Exile

John Foxe - Marian Exile

On the accession of Mary I in July 1553, Foxe was deprived of his tutorship by the children's' grandfather, the Duke of Norfolk, who was now released from prison. Foxe stayed in London, writing in January 1554 to a friend in the Dutch Stranger Church in London that he did not wish to leave and join the Marian exiles. But leave he soon did as the political climate worsened and Foxe felt personally threatened by bishop Stephen Gardiner. Foxe sailed with his then pregnant wife from Ipswich to Nieuwpoort, and then travelled to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Frankfurt and Strasbourg, which he reached by July 1554. In Strasbourg at the Rihelius press Foxe occupied himself with a Latin history of the Christian persecutions, which he had begun at the suggestion of Lady Jane Grey. He had assistance from two clerics of widely differing opinions--from Edmund Grindal, who was later, as Archbishop of Canterbury, to maintain his Puritan convictions in opposition to Elizabeth; and from John Aylmer, afterwards one of the bitterest opponents of the Puritan party. Bale too is also thought to have been a critical assistant in the production of this book which dealt chiefly with figures deemed precursors to the Protestant Reformation: John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, Savonarola and Reginald Pecock. It was printed in Strasbourg by Wendelin Richelius with the title of Commentarii rerum in ecclesia gestarum in 1554.

In the fall of 1554 Foxe removed to Frankfurt, where he lived with Anthony Gilby in the English colony of Protestant refugees. He found the group divided into two camps, one favoring a church polity and liturgy based on the Edwardian Book of Common Prayer and the other favoring the continental Reformed models typified by John Calvin's Genevan church. The latter group was led at that time by John Knox (Gilby was also a principal figure) and supported by Foxe; the former was then led by Richard Cox. Knox's faction used a revised 1552 prayerbook as a compromise gesture that failed to establish general support, and the others used the prayerbook without revision. Knox's side lost in 1555, and Knox himself was expelled. In the fall of 1555 Foxe and about twenty others also left.

Foxe then removed to Basel where he lived and worked with John Bale and Lawrence Humphrey. Peter Martyr, following a request from Grindal, put Foxe to work on a translation of Thomas Cranmer's second book on the Eucharist in the printing house of Johann Herbst (or Oporinus), where Foxe also labored as a proofreader. Foxe was also an assistant to Hieronymus Froben in the production of a Latin edition of St. John Chrysostom's works. In addition to printing his own apocalyptic comedy, Christus Triumphans (1556), Foxe made steady progress with his great martyrology, which was aided by the work of continental Protestant scholars such as Conrad Gesner, Alexander Ales (or Alesius), Heinrich Pantaleon, and Matthias Flacius. At this time Foxe's focus was on the history of persecutions against the Lutherans, but the burning in England of John Rogers turned his attention homeward. As he received reports from England of the religious persecutions there, Foxe issued from the press of Oporinus his pamphlet Ad inclytos ad praepotentes Angliae proceres ... supplicatio (1557), a plea for toleration addressed to the English nobility. Foxe also worked on a Latin translation of Cranmer's arguments against Stephen Gardiner in An Answer . . . unto a Crafty Cavillation, but it proved too controversial for any continental printer.

Perhaps headed by Grindal with an English version being worked on by other exiles (though it was never completed), Foxe's largest project during this time was a new and comprehensive Latin martyrology building on his earlier effort. Titled Rerum in ecclesia gestarum . . . commentarii, this project never incorporated all the material that was slated for inclusion, particularly European martyrs with the exception of Hus and John of Prague who were included, but it did constitute an important precursor to the Actes and Monuments. Printed by Oporinus and Nicholas Brylinger in 1559, it came to about 750 pages and ended with the early part of Mary's reign and the martyrdoms of Foxe's friends and allies John Rogers and John Hooper.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Marian Exile", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki