We have disposed at some length elsewhere of Foxe's shameless calumny of Sir Henry Bedingfeld, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and custodian of the Princess Elizabeth at Woodstock when she was suspected of connivance in Wyatt's rebellion. In espousing Elizabeth's cause, and in casting aspersions on one who was responsible for her safe custody, Foxe was but following his general plan of campaign, the not very subtle plan of representing all those of his own party to be saints and martyrs, the enemy deserving every abusive term that came to his facile pen. This simple method attained its object probably beyond the wildest dreams of its author. All along the ages the Protestant world has believed implicitly in the fables invented by Foxe, and even in these days of critical analysis, although innumerable experts have given him the lie, the effect of his calumnies remain in the deeply rooted prejudice of the nation.* Moreover, like every other succes de scandale, the book brought a rich harvest to its author. He was almost penniless when he returned to England in 1559, but the English version of his work, first published in 1563, made his fortune. The Catholics called it derisively Foxe's Golden Legend. In 1570 a second edition was printed in two volumes folio, and Convocation decreed that the book, designated by the canon as Monumenta Martyrum, should be placed in cathedral churches, and in the houses of the great ecclesiastical dignitaries. This decree, although never confirmed by parliament, was so much in accordance with the Puritan tone of the whole Church of England at that time, that even parish churches far and wide were furnished with copies of the work, chained side by side with the Bible. In the vestry minutes of St. Michael's Church, Cornhill, of 11th January 1571-72, it is ordered "that the booke of Martyrs of Mr. Foxe, and the paraphrases [of the gospel] of Erasmus [pace Erasmus] shalbe bowght for the church and tyed with a chain to the Egle bras." A few years ago, mutilated copies of the Acts and Monuments might still be seen chained in the parish churches of Apethorpe (Northamptonshire), Arreton (Isle of Wight), Chelsea, Eustone (Oxfordshire), Kniver (Staffordshire), Lussingham (Norfolk), Stratford-on-Avon, (Warwickshire) Waltham, St. Cuthbert (Wells);** also in that of Lutterworth and many other places. At Cheddar not very long ago was a great black-letter copy of the Acts and Monuments chained to the reading desk, and it is stated in the Life of Lord Macaulay that as a child, the sight of it used to fascinate him as he sat on Sunday afternoons in the family pew, longing to get at the bewitching pages.
* The late Dr. Littledale lecturing at Liverpool on Innovations in 1868 said: "Two mendacious partizans, the infamous Foxe and the not much more respectable Burnet have so overlaid all the history of the Reformation with falsehood, that it has been well-nigh impossible for readers to get at the facts," p. 16. And later on he refers to the Book of Martyrs as "that magazine of lying bigotry," p. 21.
** Dictionary of National Biography, article "John Foxe,"
No more potent means could have been devised for saturating the national mind with the principles of the Reformation than the diffusion of the Book of Martyrs on this gigantic scale. In a few years there was scarcely a parish church in England that did not possess a chained copy of the work. The illiterate might frequently be seen standing in a group round the lectern, while one among them better instructed than the rest read to them aloud its graphic and lying legends. Added to this, in many churches a chapter was read to the assembled congregations every Sunday evening along with the Bible, and the clergy constantly made its dubious martyrdoms the subject of their sermons. No wonder that it assumed an importance equal to that of the Scriptures themselves. One of the indictments against Archbishop Laud at his trial was the fact that he had ordered it to be removed from some churches in his diocese.*
* Dictionary of National Biography, article "John Foxe."
The secret of its charm for Puritan England did not altogether lie in its Anti-Marian character, or in the partisanship of its garbled facts and fictitious heroisms. The simplicity of its vigorous English, the picturesque though minute circumstances which it detailed, the very boldness with which it lied, in league with the primary passions to which it appealed, made it one of the most powerful engines in the revolution that gradually changed the face of the whole country. Its deadly work of destruction has been effectually accomplished, and it is almost useless to attempt to convince a people into whose frame and tissue its stories have been woven, that the Protestant Reformation in which they so implicitly believe is but a fairytale for the invention of which John Foxe is mainly responsible. Gairdner, in his History of the English Church in the Sixteenth Century, a book of the very first importance for any serious study of the period, has again and again expressed his opinion of the worthlessness of the Acts and Monuments as history; and the Rev. John Gerard* has been at the pains of collecting the learned historian's remarks on Foxes compilation. He says:
* In his pamphlet, John Fare and his Book of Martyrs, Catholic Truth
Society.
"But more damaging than any other is the criticism which Foxe receives at the hands of Mr. James Gairdner, the fullness of whose knowledge is matched only by the calm judicial manner in which he deals with the martyrologist's stories as he encounters them in his own history. Discussing each case on its merits, and giving full weight to the evidence on either side, Mr. Gairdner finds charges of untruthfulness and dishonesty established at every turn. Foxe, he declares, ignores or misrepresents evidence that tells against him [p. 38]; he manipulates it to suit his purpose [56]; he counts as martyrs offenders of all kinds [129n]; he 'was above all things credulous' [131]; he tells stories, the falsehood of which may be gathered from his own relation [ibid]; he suppresses facts furnished by the authorities upon whom he draws [133]; he insinuates what is utterly false [135]; he evidently wishes his readers to understand what he does not venture openly to say [220-21]; he prejudices readers by irrelevant gibes [271]; he has made people believe what is untrue [333]; he was quite as prejudiced and unfair as the notorious Bishop Bale [342]; his narrative has been exposed as untrustworthy by reason of its bias, but has not even yet been subjected to complete and thorough criticism [352]. In consequence of all this, says Mr. Gairdner, Foxe has given a false colour to the history of the times, and especially to the sentiments and motives of the persecutors. ' It is quite untrue, as Foxe and his school have made the world believe, that the authorities were savage or ferocious . . . The burning of heretics was a barbarous old-fashioned remedy, but it is not true that either the bishops or the government adopted it without reluctance' [349, 355]. And again, a royal commission, issued on 8th February 1557, is printed by Foxe with the title, `A bloody commission given forth by K. Philip and Q. Mary to persecute the poor members of Christ.' If we read the preamble, however, we find that it was provoked by the assiduous propagation of a number of slanderous and seditious rumours, along with which the sowing of heresies and heretical opinions was merely a concurrent' [387]."
Nevertheless, that the influence of Foxe is not by any means extinct in our own day, is proved by the successive republications of his book during the nineteenth century. In 1836 the plea for a new edition was put forward in a letter to the editor of the Record in these astounding terms:—
"When we consider the high character of the work for accuracy of detail; its full exhibition of the Gospel in all its holy and triumphant efficacy; the bulwark it has proved to our Protestant faith; its peculiar seasonableness to meet all the fresh dangers from Popery in the present times; and its intrinsic value, as forming a sound standard of Reformation divinity, we find it an exercise of Christian charity to call the public attention to it. We might further adduce the imprimatur of our own Church, by her act of Convocation appending it to all the ecclesiastical establishments in the land, as giving to Foxe's work, an additional claim of regard."