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Updated: May 11, 2025
Father Robert Persons, in his Three Conversions of England,* begins one of his chapters with "a note of more than a hundred and twenty lies uttered by John Foxe, in less than three leaves of his Acts and Monuments," and he proceeds to point them out, beginning with the misstatement concerning John Merbeck and some others, whom Foxe counts among the martyrs, although they were never burned at all.
Foxe first introduced Cranmer to the King; and he, again, wrote the book called The Difference between the Kingly and the Ecclesiastical Power, which Henry wished people to think he had partly written himself, intended, as it was, to make easier his assumption of ecclesiastical supremacy.
It is a weighty and learned work, written in a dignified style, and was eagerly read. It, however, failed to arrest the persecution to which the Quakers were exposed, and B. himself, on returning from the Continent, where he had gone with Foxe and Penn, was imprisoned, but soon regained his liberty, and was in the enjoyment of Court favour.
The only mistake which Foxe here makes is in saying that the priest was Sir John Cheltham. The would-be assassin harangued his victim before dealing the blow, and then struck home so forcibly that the priest fell as if dead. A tumult arose, the multitude thinking that the Spaniards were attacking them.
Among them are found Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York, who was Master of Pembroke; Foxe, the great Bishop of Winchester and patron of learning; Ridley; Grindal, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury; Matthew Hutton and Whitgift. Beside these masters Edmund Spenser, the poet Gray, and William Pitt are names of which Pembroke will always be proud.
Strype was the first unquestioning copyist of Foxe; Burnet was the second; and Sir Reginald Hennell is the most recent.* * In his volume "The History of the King's Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard."
Foxe speaks of it as one of the random exploits of Cromwell's youth, which is obviously untrue; and the natural impression which we gather is, that he was confusing the expedition of the Duke of Bourbon with some earlier campaign.
Clement VII., while not unwilling to grant the dispensation requested, did not think it consistent with his own honour or that of the king, to grant the commission according to the terms drawn up for him in England. A new embassy, consisting of Edward Foxe, and Dr. Stephen Gardiner, Wolsey's secretary, was dispatched, and arrived at Orvieto in March 1528.
But a part of what Foxe wrote about Tewkesbury in one edition of the Acts and Monuments he omitted in another, patching it on to Bainham's story, thus stultifying himself as regards both stories,* and affording us another signal illustration of the irresponsible and unscrupulous way in which he could deal with evidence.
These hints are but slight, since I shall not even mention the scandals of Sanders, any more than I shall mention the panegyrics of Foxe; stories which, as far as I can learn, have no support in evidence, and rest on no stronger foundation than the credulity of passion.
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