JOHN FOXE'S VICTORIAN RECEPTION

Abstract

In the first year of Victoria's reign, the English reading public's expectations of ‘A new and complete edition’ of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments began to receive fulfilment, as the initial three volumes were issued by Seeley and Burnside. Not all were prepared to give the work a magnanimous reception. Chief among the detractors of that age was Samuel Roffey Maitland, destined in the near future to become librarian at Lambeth Palace under Howley's tenure as archbishop of Canterbury. This essay explores the nature of Maitland's fervent objections to Foxe and his martyrology, and also examines Maitland's relationship to the major religious movements of his day (including Tractarianism). It argues that Maitland was offended by what he perceived as Foxe's extreme partisan bias (as a member of the puritan wing of the English church) and equally, by the poor editorial job which he believed to have been performed in the Cattley/Seeley project. Furthermore, it maintains that Maitland had a sympathetic though rather complex relationship with the divines of the Oxford Movement, including John Henry Newman. Maitland's scholarly credentials as a Foxe critic are also examined.