John Fox

John Foxe (1516–1587) was an English historian, Protestant martyrologist, and author of one of the most consequential books in English religious history. Born in Boston, Lincolnshire, he studied at Brasenose College and Magdalen College, Oxford, becoming a fellow at Magdalen — but resigned his fellowship rather than comply with the college's Catholic statutes under the reign of Mary I.

When Mary Tudor came to the throne in 1553 and began burning Protestants, Foxe fled to the European continent, joining the community of Protestant exiles in Frankfurt, Strasbourg, and Basel. It was during this exile that he began the enormous work of collecting testimonies, official records, letters, and eyewitness accounts of Protestant martyrs stretching back to John Wycliffe and Jan Hus.

His Acts and Monuments — universally known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs — was first published in Latin in 1554 and in a greatly expanded English edition in 1563. The book ran to thousands of pages and documented in vivid detail the suffering of those burned for their Protestant faith, particularly under Mary I. Among its most memorable passages is the account of Thomas Haukes, who was burned at the stake in 1555 and reportedly raised his charred hands above his head in a pre-arranged signal to watching friends that the grace of God sustained him even in the flames.

The Book of Martyrs became, after the Bible, the most widely read book in Elizabethan England, placed by royal injunction in churches and cathedrals alongside the Scriptures. It shaped English Protestant identity for generations, cementing a deep suspicion of Roman Catholicism and a sense that English Protestants were the heirs of a suffering, faithful church. Foxe himself was a man of remarkable charity for his era — he repeatedly interceded for condemned men on all sides and opposed the burning of Anabaptists.