John Foxe was the boy who stayed behind while other children went out to play, found instead deep in a book or at prayer in the church. Born in Boston, Lincolnshire, around 1516, he came from a family of middling prominence, yet his childhood was defined by an unusual and intense devotion that set him apart from his peers. By the time he was sixteen, he had entered Brasenose College, Oxford, where he studied under John Hawarden, a man who may have been a family friend and whose influence would shape Foxe's early intellectual development. His academic journey was marked by a relentless pursuit of knowledge; by age twenty-five, he had mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and canon law, and had read the works of the Latin and Greek fathers. This early dedication to study would later ruin his health, but it also forged the foundation of a man who would become England's first literary celebrity.
Foxe's life was not without its perils. His conversion to Protestantism in the 1540s led to his resignation from Magdalen College, Oxford, after he refused to attend mass and openly opposed clerical celibacy, which he described in letters as self-castration. The political and religious climate of the time was volatile, and Foxe's beliefs put him in danger. He witnessed the burning of William Cowbridge in September 1538, an event that would haunt him and fuel his later work. After being forced from the college, Foxe experienced a period of dire need, living as a tutor in the household of Thomas Lucy near Stratford-on-Avon. It was during this time, on the 3rd of February 1547, that he married Agnes Randall, beginning a family that would eventually have six children. His early years were marked by a struggle between his academic ambitions and the harsh realities of religious persecution, a tension that would define much of his later life.
Exile And The Birth Of A Book
When Mary I ascended to the throne in July 1553, the Protestant cause in England faced a devastating backlash, and John Foxe found himself in immediate danger. He fled England with his pregnant wife, sailing from Ipswich to Nieuwpoort and eventually making his way to Strasbourg, where he published the first draft of what would become his most famous work. This Latin history of Christian persecutions, titled Commentarii rerum in ecclesia gestarum, was the first shadow of his great book, emphasizing the persecution of the English Lollards during the 15th century. Foxe's exile was not merely a flight from persecution but a period of intense intellectual and spiritual labor. He worked with fellow exiles like John Bale and Lawrence Humphrey, proofreading and editing texts in the printing houses of Johann Herbst and Hieronymus Froben. Despite receiving occasional financial contributions from English merchants, Foxe lived in wretched poverty, yet his reputation grew steadily.
In Strasbourg, Foxe's work began to take shape, and he collected materials to continue his story to the present. His Latin edition, published in Basel in August 1559, was the first true version of his famous book, Rerum in ecclesia gestarum. This work, which would later become known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, was a response to the ongoing religious persecution in England under Mary I. Foxe's exile was a time of both hardship and productivity, as he worked tirelessly to document the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants. His experiences in exile, combined with his deep religious convictions, laid the groundwork for a book that would become one of the most influential works in English history. The book would not only document the past but also shape the future of English Protestantism, creating a narrative of suffering and redemption that would resonate for centuries.