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A Reformation Dilemma: John Foxe and the Problem of Discipline

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Catharine Davies  and
Jane Facey
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Extract

John Foxe's De censura, sive excommunicatione ecclesiastica, rectoque eius usu, published in 1551, was the earliest tract to be written by an English Protestant on the subject of ecclesiastical discipline and, as such, deserves a closer examination than it has received to date. Given that continental Protestants and, later on, Puritan apologists alike accepted as axiomatic that the Reformation could only be established on the twin pillars of pure doctrine and right discipline, the appearance at this time, amid a stream of doctrinal polemic, of a tract on discipline, was significant. It indicated that Protestants had become confident enough, after waging war on the claims of the Church of Rome, to regulate the lives of its members, to assert similar claims in the name of Scripture and reformed ‘true religion’. That this tract should appear in Edward VI's reign, and not earlier, was important in this respect, for the effect of the Henrician Reformation had been to render impossible any suggestion that the Church should or could be autonomous in discipline. The psychological climate - as well as the theoretical framework - of the Supremacy persisted throughout Edward's reign, but the fact that the king was a minor gave Protestants a breathing space in which to approach the problem of trying to bring the Church into line with pure, apostolic models. In terms of quantity of published material, doctrine, rather than discipline, was undoubtedly much the more important of the issues discussed; by dealing with discipline a Protestant writer was grasping the nettle, for the subject raised questions about the relative roles of Church and State in the reformation of society and, ultimately, about the structure of the national Church. Foxe's tract was the first attempt to face the question of discipline; that it was the only one, even in Edward vi's reign, showed what a hold the Supremacy had taken. The aim of this article, therefore, is to bring out the significance of Foxe ‘s tract and to explore some of the tensions in mid-Tudor Protestant thought which it reflects. The first part (by Catharine Davies) aims to set it more precisely in its Edwardian context; the second (by Jane Facey) uses it to illuminate the changed emphasis of Foxe's thought on the relationship of Church and State required by the writing of the Acts and Monuments.

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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , January 1988 , pp. 37 - 65
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

The authors are grateful to Dr Williams's Library for providing such good working conditions when we were translating their copy of De censura, and Professor Sir Geoffrey Elton, Dr P. G. Lake and DrJ. Fines for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

1 Pollard, A. W. and Redgrave, G. R. (eds), A Short-títle Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1641 (hereinafter cited as STC), London 1926, 11233Google Scholar; De censura sive excommunicatione ecclesiastica rectoque eius usu, ad illuslrissimum patrem archiepiscopum cantuariensem, reliquosque huius ordinis episcopos pastores, acministros Ecclesiae Anglicanae ubicunque constitutos interpellate, London 1551, printed by Mierdman, S.Google Scholar for Robert Toye. This seems to be an unusual collaboration, for Toye tended to be associated with conservative religious publications, whereas Mierdman produced books that were emphatically Protestant. See Took, P. M., Government and the Printing Trade, 1540-60, unpub. PhD diss., London University 1979, 200-1, 212.Google Scholar

The only recent discussion of this work has been in Olsen, V. N., John Foxe and the Elizabethan Church, Berkeley 1973, 148–51Google Scholar . The outline of the content is given; the discussion does not take into account changes either in political circumstances or in Foxe's attitude. See also the mention in Mozley, J. F., John Foxe and his Book, London 1940, 33–5Google Scholar.

2 Though earlier reformers had concentrated their attention on doctrine and sacraments, Bucer's thinking is indicated in his correspondence from England, in Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, ii, (Parker Society 1847), 536, 540, 546-7, 550,Google Scholar where he notes the shortcomings of the English Reformation in discipline. Calvin's theory articulated this concern: ‘Accordingly, as the saving doctrine of Christ is the soul of the Church, so does discipline serve as its sinews, through which the members of the body hold together, each in its own place’, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. McNeill, J. T., trans. Battles, F. L., London 1961, iv. 12. 1230.Google Scholar An example of Puritan concern is shown in Walter Travers's description of doctrine and discipline as Hippocrates’ twins: ‘True doctrine as the elder sister is recovered, let us not hinder her to affect also discipline with her health; that as it began to be sick together with doctrine, it may also be recovered with it’. Travers, Walter, A full and plain declaration of ecclesiastical discipline out of the word of God, Zurich 1574, 14–15.Google Scholar Cited in Lake, P. G., Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church, Cambridge 1982, 65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarDe censura has been cited as an indication of Foxe's ‘puritan sympathies at this early date’ by Knappen, M. M., Tudor Puritanism, Chicago 1970, 101,Google Scholar but the use of this term is misleading for both the period and the tract.

3 For the idea that reformers became ‘new papists’ see Ozment, S., The Reformation in the Cities, New Haven 1980, 151–64.Google Scholar

4 , Foxe, De censura, sig. B87V.Google Scholar

6 Cf. STC, 6096. Crowley, R., The way to wealth, London 1550Google Scholar ; Pantzer, K. F., Jackson, W. A. and Ferguson, F. S. (eds), A Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad 1475-1640, II: I-Z, 2nd edn (hereinafter cited as RSTC II), London 1976Google Scholar , 15546. Lever, T., A sermon preached at Paul's Cross 14 December 1550, London 1551Google Scholar ; Latimer, H., ‘Last sermon preached before King Edward vi’, in Sermons, Corrie, G. E. (ed.) (Parker Society 1844), 239–81Google Scholar.

6 Foxe, op. cit. sigs A4V-5.

7 Ibid. sig. A5.

8 Ibid, sigs B3V-4, social unrest; sigs B5-7, adultery and divorce; ch. v, greed and excess; sigs B5V, C7, E6, ‘carnal gospellers’; sigs A5V, C7, ‘impietas’. God would punish England by taking the Gospel away: the situation of Germany under the Interim provided a dire contemporary warning, comparable with the biblical examples of the punishments of unrepentant nations, sig. A6v.

9 ‘Quodque non ego solus expeto, sed Christus ipse, communis Ecclesia, vestra utilitas, omniumque piorum gemitus quotidianis votis vocibus ac lachrimis efflagitant’, Ibid. sig. A4.

10 Ibid. sig. B7V.

11 , Latimer, Sermons, 257–78Google Scholar . His plea was for the revival of excommunication to deal with what he saw as a rising tide of sexual immorality, an interesting agreement with Foxe. However, earlier in the same sermon he had made a more conventional plea for punishing adultery with death, Sermons, 240.

14 Ridley's ‘authoritarianism’ surfaced most notably in his clash with Hooper over vestments in 1550 and in his antagonism to the setting up of the Strangers’ Churches in the same year. For Ridley's views on the Vestments Controversy see Primus, J., The Vestments Controversy, Kampen 1960, 16–34Google Scholar . The relationship of the course of this controversy with the setting up of the Strangers’ Churches has been examined by Pettegree, A., Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-century London, Oxford 1963, ch. iGoogle Scholar.

13 Cf. Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum, ed. Foxe, J., London 1571Google Scholar (pr. J. Day). A more modern edition is Cardwell, E. (ed.), The Reformation of the Ecclesiastical Laws as attempted in the reigns of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, and Queen Elizabeth, Oxford 1850, 167–77Google Scholar . On the significance of the attempted reform, see Spalding, J. C., ‘The “Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum ” of 1552 and the furthering of discipline in England’, Church History xxxix (1970), 162–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 STC, 11235. Foxe, John, De non plectendis morte adulteris, London 1548Google Scholar (pr. H. Singleton). This was republished with the altered title of De lapsis in ecclesiam recipiendis consultatio cum pastoribus in 1549, with a preface substituted for the dedication. Joye referred to these alterations as an attempt by Foxe to hide the dangerous contents of his book, Revised RSTC, I: A-L (unpubl.), 11235.5. We would like to thank the English Antiquarian Section of the British Library for letting us have this information.

15 RSTC II, 14822. Joye, George, A contrary to a certain man's consultation: that adulterers ought to be punished with death. With the solutions of his arguments for the contrary, London 1549Google Scholar (pr. S. Mierdman?). Joye wrote in English to warn ‘all men’ that Foxe's tract was ‘perilous’, ‘ungodly’ and based on ‘detestable error’, in deliberate contrast to Foxe's dangerously elitist Latin, sig. A2.

18 , Foxe, De non plectendis, sigs Bv, A2v.Google Scholar

17 Ibid, sigs Bv-3, B7V-C. However, he denied that he advocated licentiousness, ibid, sigs B4, C7v-8.

18 Ibid, sigs A2v, A5-6, B5-7, C2-2V.

19 Joye, A contrary, sig. E5, translating Foxe, De non plectendis, sig. B4.

20 Foxe, op. cit. sigs A4, A4.V, B7V.

21 Ibid, sigs B4, C3V.

22 Ibid, sigs B4-4V, C6v.

23 Ibid, sigs C1v-2.

24 Joye, A contrary, sig A7.

25 Ibid. sig. B8.

26 Ibid, sigs B7-V. Joye cited Henry Bullinger approvingly to reinforce his case, sig. A6.

27 Ibid, sigs C1v-3, D1-4, D8v-E2. Joye cited the Homily on Adultery here as further proof that Foxe's views were unacceptable to the Protestant ‘establishment’, Ibid. sig. D3V.

28 Ibid, sigs G5, G5V.

29 Ibid. sig. C4-V.

30 ‘Anabaptism’, ibid, sigs E4v, F5, F8v-G; ‘popery’, sigs C2-C2V, C8.

31 The need for charity was discussed in a long digression on matrimonial problems (a pointer to De non plectendis), De censura, sigs B5-7. The separation of powers was the subject of Ibid. ch. vii, but there were notable exceptions in the use of the examples of Ambrose, sigs C, C7-8V, and Emperor Phillip, sig. E5V.

32 E.g. the use of examples of pagan severity, A contrary, sigs A7, B6-7, and De censura, sigs A8v-Bv, and the discussion of the punishment of David for his seduction of Bathsheba, cited ambiguously by Foxe, Ibid. sig. C6v. Both of these subjects were discussed in STC, 14045. Bullinger, H., The Christian State of Matrimony (trans. Coverdale, Miles), 1541, ch. xivGoogle Scholar ; Joye used this tract as an authority in his criticism of Foxe, describing Bullinger as ‘a man of an excellent judgement and highly learned, a man of pure judgement’, A contrary, sig. A6.

33 Discipline was described as a mark of the Church in the official Catechism, though its workings were not described; STC, 4812: (John Ponet?). A short Catechism or Plain instruction containing the sum of Christian learning, set forth by the king's majesty s authority, London 1553, sigs C1V-G3.Google Scholar Earlier, it had been called for in two tracts about the Lord's Supper, RSTC II, 15188. Lancaster, Thomas, The right and true understanding of the Supper of the Lord, London 1550?, sig. D4Google Scholar ; and RSTC II, 24078: E.T.. Here beginneth the song of the Lord's Supper, London 1550?, sig. A2.Google Scholar Hooper put a more elegant case for discipline in A Declaration of Christ and his Office (Zurich 1547)Google Scholar , in Early Writings, Carr, S. (ed.) (Parker Society 1843), 90–1; but, by 1550Google Scholar , he admitted that ‘no Church as touching this part, can be absolutely perfect’, in A Godly Confession (1550)Google Scholar repr. in Later Writings, C. Nevinson (ed.) (Parker Society 1852), 87.

34 STC, 359. Allen, Edmund, A Catechism, that is to say a familiar introduction and training of the simple in the commandments of God, London 1548Google Scholar ; STC, 360. A catechism, that is to say a Christian instruction now newly corrected, London 1551Google Scholar . The second edition has a different introduction but the account of discipline remains the same (all references are to this edition). STC, 361: A short catechism, a brief and godly bringing up of youth, ? Zurich 1550, has no account of discipline but substitutes a section on matrimony. The introduction to the first edition of his catechism declared that the work was ‘gathered out of divers learned and godly writers of catechisms’ which presumably referred to Swiss and German Protestants. This ‘continental influence’ was probably acquired during Allen's exile in the Rhineland in the 1540s. See Hildebrandt, E., ‘A study of the English Protestant exiles in north Switzerland and Strasburg, 1539-47’, unpub. PhD diss., Durham 1982, ch. ii. In 08 1549Google Scholar , as chaplain to Princess Elizabeth, he received a letter from Bucer which may point to an earlier contact with him, Original Letters, ii. no. 251, pp. 541-2.

35 The Strangers’ Churches’ publications discussed are RSTC II, 16572.7. Doctrine de la penitance publique, London 1552Google Scholar ; RSTC II, 16571. Lasco, John à, Forma ac ratio tola ecclesiastici ministerii, , Emden and , Frankfurt 1554, FrenchGoogle Scholar trans. RSTC II, 16574: Toute la forme et maniere du ministere ecclesiastique, Emden 1556. The liturgical outline of the service of reconciliation in the Doctrine is amplified in the section on discipline in Toute la forme. The practice of discipline in the Strangers’ Churches has been discussed in Denis, P., ‘Discipline in the English Huguenot Churches of the Reformation: a legacy or novelty?’, in Proceedings of the Huguenot Society xxiii (1977-1982) and by , Pettegree, Strangers, 65–6Google Scholar.

36 The greater part (except for the long excursus on matrimony) is in Melancthon and Bucer, Pauck, W. and Larkin, P. (eds and trans.), London 1969Google Scholar . All references are to this edition. Two sections dealt specifically with discipline: ‘On the discipline of life and manners’ and ‘On the discipline of penance’ (bk 1, chs viii and ix). Bucer's own experiments in enforcing discipline at Strasburg are detailed in Bornert, R., ‘La reforme Protestante du culte a Strasbourg au xvie siecle (1523-1598)’, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Life and Thought xxviii (1981)Google Scholar.

37 , Bucer, De Regno, 213Google Scholar ; , Foxe, De censura, sigs C7, C7VGoogle Scholar.

38 , Lasco, Toute la forme, 192.Google Scholar

38 Ibid. 156. Lasco also described discipline (like Calvin, n. 1) as the sinews (nerfs) holding the Christian body together. Foxe quoted St Bernard's description of the chariot of fleshly desire to increase the impact of his metaphor of the bridle, op. cit. sigs Cyv, E3, B2V.

40 Lasco, op. cit., 151V-2, also general ‘offices’ of church members, 160V-1V. Bucer, op. cit. ch. viii.

41 Lasco, op. cit. 157-8, points 9 and 10 of Lasco's definition of discipline; see also 187-91, reasons for public admonition in excommunication, cf. 164.V, the admonition of the sinner should be gentle, ‘qu'ilz soyent comme menez par la main et invitez à repentance’; see also Doctrine, sig. *2, the reconciliation of the penitent. , Bucer, De Regno, 242Google Scholar , exclusion of the sinners; 247, excommunication as a remedy. , Foxe, De censura, sigs C3V-C4.Google Scholar Foxe quoted St Augustine ‘Contra Parmeniani epistolam’ for the description of excommunication as a remedy.

42 E.g. Doctrine, sigs *2, *5v.

43 Foxe, op. cit. sig. D3V.

44 , Lasco, Toute la forme, 184Google Scholar ; , Allen, Catechism, L7Google Scholar ; , Foxe, op. cit. ch. iGoogle Scholar.

45 , Bucer, op. cit. 223.Google Scholar

46 Allen, op. cit. L5V, L6; Foxe, op. cit. ch. iv; Lasco, op. cit. 157V-8, 189V-90.

47 Foxe, De censura, sig. D7V. Also, significantly, he thought that disrespect for the ministry (e.g. disregarding the call to fast) should be punished by excommunication, sig. D8.

48 , Bucer, De Regno, 247. Bucer and Foxe were very similar in approach here.Google Scholar

49 Allen, Catechism, L4V-M3.

60 ‘En ces lieux certes de l'escriture, sont les sources manifestes pour observer les admonitions en l'Eglise de Christ, en sort qu'il appert qu'on ne les peut laisser sans grande faute’, Lasco, Toute la forme, 152V-3.

51 Foxe, De censura, sigs A7V-8. Foxe merely mentioned Matt, xviii and supplemented 1 Cor. v with Paul's directions on the duties and character of the pastor in the letters to Timothy and Titus.

62 Allen, Catechism, sigs L4V, M1. The minister in this account acted as a ‘mouthpiece’ for the Church, in contrast to Foxe's view of the central and independent role of the minister.

53 Bucer, De Regno, ch. viii.

54 Doctrine, sigs *5v-8; Lasco, Toute la forme, 191, excommunication brings unity; 191–2, service of excommunication; 217-19, congregation exhorted to receive back penitent.

55 Foxe, De censura, sig. A2.

56 Allen, Catechism, sig. L5V; Bucer, op. cit. 231. Bucer saw elders as assistants to th e ministers (1 Cor. xii. 28) and required that their numbers should be proportionate to those of the congregation, so that the flock could be properly watched over, ibid, ch. viii.

57 Lasco, op. cit. 155, elders part of ‘primitive order’; 164 ff., as taking part in admonition; 170, especially in preventing cases of hypocrisy; 221V-43V, also in disciplining the ministry. Cf. Doctrine, sig. *7.

58 , Bucer, op. cit. 247Google Scholar ; , Allen, op. cit. sig. M3Google Scholar ; , Lasco, op. cit. 199Google Scholar.

59 Foxe, De censura, sig. E2.

60 Ibid. ch. viii. Lasco went further than Foxe in suggesting that the Reformation was harmed when the magistrate claimed power over the Church and would not submit to its discipline - his citing of Theodosius and Ambrose is thus more consistent than Foxe's, Toute la forme, 225.

61 Foxe, op. cit. sig. A4. See n. 1.

62 Ibid, sigs C2, Div.

63 Ibid. sig. A3.

64 Cf. , Latimer, Sermons, 59–78Google Scholar ; , Hooper, Early Writings, 447, 451, 480-1, 508Google Scholar ; Thomas Lever, Sermon Preached at Paul's Cross.

65 This makes his silence on elders even more conspicuous. Perhaps it can be explained by his opposition to radical changes in the Church hinted at at the end of the tract (sig. E7v), or by the fact that he saw ungodliness as such a pervasive problem that the recruitment of elders was impractical or impossible (sig. A5).

66 ‘Quae aetas aeque ferax unquam extitit bonarum concionum. Quae pars, quae urbs fere in tota Anglia non personuit atque etiam prope modum occalluit ad vestras hortationes’, Foxe, De censura, sigs A7-V. Bucer, however, realised that the English Church still effectively lacked a preaching ministry, cf. Original Letters, ii. 539, 543, 546-7.

67 Foxe, op. cit. sig. A4.V.

68 Ibid. sig. A7V; cf. De non plectendis, sigs B5-V. Joye used the metaphor of the surgeon more literally, to describe the magistrate's use of the temporal sword.

69 , Foxe, De censura, ch. i.Google Scholar An explanation of the medieval background can be found in Hill, R., ‘The theory and practice of excommunication in mediaeval England’, History xlii (1957), 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A general view of the declining effectiveness of'spiritual censures’ during the sixteenth century can be found in Houlbrooke, R., Church Courts and the People during the English Reformation, Oxford 1979, 48–50, 261-8Google Scholar.

70 Foxe, op. cit. sig. A2.

71 Anticipating possible charges of papist clericalism, Foxe listed thirteen examples of the misuse of excommunication by both popes and prelates in the past, ibid, sigs D4-5. However, in the context of antipopery, there was no need to distinguish between its abuse and its proper use, as Foxe, defending it, ha d to do. Contemporary examples of excommunication being cited as papist tyranny include: RSTC II, 20176. Ponet, John, A Defence of the Marriage of Priests, London 1549, sigs C6, C6vGoogle Scholar ; RSTC II, 14942. Kethe, William, A Ballad declaring the Fall of the Whore of Babylon, London 1548, sig. B3VGoogle Scholar ; RSTC II, 17115. Lynne, Walter, The beginning and ending of all Popery, London 1548, 58–9Google Scholar ; , Latimer, Sermons, 206Google Scholar.

72 Foxe, op. cit. sigs C3V, D5V, C6.

73 ‘Quorum alii scortis ad crapulae indulgent, alii gloriae suae ac ambitione inserviunt, alii student quaestui, alii periuriis infames, alii alea ac luxu perditi sunt, alios inflammat vindictae cupiditas, plerique quovis Ethnico perfidiores, in omnibus fere levitas, pauci earn praeseferunt gravitatem quae digna est huius disciplinae sectatoribus’, Ibid. sig. A6; ibid, sig. A6v.

74 Ibid, sigs A2v, D1v, careerism; ibid, sigs E4.V-6, D2V, impartiality; ibid, sigs D5-v, blindness to sin.

75 Ibid. sig. C8v.

76 Ibid. sig. D1, Cato; sig. C7V, Ambrose; sig. C8, Luther.

77 Ibid, sigs A5-V.

78 Ibid. sig. D8v.

79 Ibid. sig. E7V.

80 E.g. Cranmer's edition of Justus Jonas's version of the Nuremberg Catechism, which devoted a section to the power of the keys, relating it mainly to the power of the priest to give absolution, STC, 5993: Catechismus, London 1548, sigs Ii8v-Kk6v.

81 Foxe, De censura, sig. A3.

82 Ibid. sig. E7V.

83 Ibid. sig. Aa-v.

84 Ibid. sig. E7V.

85 ‘Mundani sunt isti dignitatum ac fastigii gradus. Potentia ac virtus est non dignitas, ministerium non imperium functio Ecclesiastica’, Ibid. sig. B3V.

86 Ibid, sigs A6, A6v, B4.

87 Ibid, sigs E3V, E4, magistrate; A4.V, godly.

88 STC, 11222: Foxe, Acts and Monuments of these latter and perillous dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein ar comprehended and described the great persecutions and horrible troubles… Gathered and collected according to the true copies and wry tinges certificatorie, as wel of the parties themselves that suffered, as also out of the Bishops Registers, which wer the doers thereof (hereinafter cited as Acts and Monuments 1563), London 1563.Google Scholar One folio volume containing 1,800 pages and 50 woodcuts. STC, 11223: idem, The Ecclesiastical History, contayning the Acts and Monuments of Thynges passed in every kynges tyme in this Realme, especially in the church of England principally to be noted…from the primitive tyme till the reigne of King Henry VIII (hereinafter cited as Acts and Monuments 1570), London 1570.Google Scholar Two folio volumes containing 2,300 large pages of text, each page divided into two columns, and 150 woodcuts. Idem, De censura, a small treatise of seventy-four octavo pages.

89 ‘Et quid demum hanc levitatem vestram consequitarum creditis, nisi ut Deus tandem nimis exasperatus sceleribus nostris aut denuo eripiat quod largitus est aut quam acerrima visitatione flagellet iniquitates nostras’, Foxe, op. cit. sigs A6-v.

90 ‘The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe’ in Pratt, Josiah (ed.), The Church Historians of England, London 1853-1870, vi. 350.Google Scholar

91 Ibid. v. 698; 2 Kings xxiii. 2-25.

92 This woodcut forms the capital C in the second dedicatory episde beginning ‘Christ the Prince of all princes, who hath placed you in your throne of majesty’, Foxe, Acts and Monuments 1570; see also Acts and Monuments 1563, sig. Bir. Cf. Hageman, E. H., ‘John Foxe's Henry vui as Justitia’, Sixteenth Century Journal x (1979), 35–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The woodcut of King Henry VIII portrayed him holding a sword in his right hand and a book in his left while he trampled upon Pope Clement vn. Henry's was the first victory against the papacy, which was brought to a conclusion in Elizabeth.

93 ‘Acts and Monuments’, vii. 466.

94 Ibid. i. 292.

95 Ibid. vi. 275. Exod. xxiv. 8. But this is not to imply that Foxe disregarded the sacraments and preaching as marks of the true Church. The Edwardian Church had possessed those marks but had not proved itself to have embraced them sincerely. The martyrs provided that proof since their denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation and their belief in the true teaching of Scripture were often the main issues and the chief reasons for martyrdom. See Olsen, John Foxe, 123-39, esp at p. 135–52

96 ‘Unde potius omnium virtutum exempla peti convenicbat qua m a nobis qui ceu alter Israel in oculis totius mundi soli fere Christianae religionis defensionem sustinemus qua m aut summo cum fructu tueri, aut maxima cum turpitudine deserere necesse est’, Foxe, De censura, sig. A5.

97 ‘Olim dum verum ille viguit Christianae piatatis vigor, nihil erat abstinentius huius professionis discipulis, turn nihil erat Christianorum vita aliud quam perpetua sobrietas cum orandi perpetua studio coniuncta’, Ibid. v. sigs D6V-7.

98 Foxe, ‘Acts and Monuments’, i. 99-304. The ten persecutions of the primitive Church were recorded by Foxe largely from Eusebius’ History of the Church. In his fully developed periodisation of church history found in the 1570 edition of the Acts and Monuments, Foxe placed the ten early persecutions in the first suffering period of the Church before Satan was bound. Th e later persecutions of the Gospellers corresponded to the fourth period of the Church, after Satan had again been loosed, idem, Acts and Monuments 1570. i. 49.

99 Idem, ‘Acts an d Monuments’, iii. 542; Zech. xiii. 9.

100 , Foxe, op. cit. vii. 466.Google Scholar

102 Foxe, De censura, vii. sig. E2V.

103 For God required ‘an internal sincerity’ beyond ‘the tranquillity of the State’, ibid, vii. sigs E2V, E3V.

104 Ibid. vii. sig. E3V.

105 ‘Imploranda sunt legum Civilium praesidia ut per magistratus caveatur ne quis se adiungat horum contubernio nisi si quis hortandi consolandive studio convenire cupiat… Atque hac imprimis optandum videtur a magistratibus, qui si in hac re tantum operae suae impartiri velint Ecclesiae Christianae, se dignum fecerint’, Ibid. vi. sig. E2.

106 ‘Non parui referre haec utriusque potestatis discrimina recte sciteque distingui, quo melius vitato confusionis errore quid sua cuiusque functio postulet intelligatur, neutraque pars in alteris temere irruat possessionem’, Ibid. vii. sig. E4.

107 , Foxe, ‘Acts and Monuments’, i. 26.Google Scholar Cf. Nowell, A., A Catechism (2nd edn, Cambridge 1570), ed. Corrie, C. B., trans. Norton, T. (Parker Society 1853), 218Google Scholar . Nowell's answer to the problem of maintaining order in the Church was ‘ecclesiastical magistrates’; chosen elders who could call the pastor to account. But, although reducing tensions between Church and State, it introduced new tensions between the roles of the pastor and the godly laity. See Jewel, J., ‘The Defence of the Apology’, in the Works of John Jewel, ed. Ayre, Revd J. (Parker Society 1845), iv. 981, 986, 1021, 1035-8.Google Scholar Jewel agreed with Foxe on the position of the magistrate within the Church.

108 ‘Nunc vero dum politicus magistratus pretermittit multa, ecclesiasticus connivet ad omnia difficile est dictu, in quantum interim peccandi licentiam erupit effrensis multitudinis fiducia’, Foxe, De censura, vii. sig. 4.

109 Collinson, P., ‘If Constantine, then also Theodosius: St Ambrose and the integrity of the Elizabethan Ecclesia Anglicana’, this Journal XXX (1979).Google Scholar Also in idem, Godly People. Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism, London 1983, ch. iv, 109-35.

110 God set up Constantine to ‘benefit and enlarge’ the Church. Foxe referred particularly to the emperor's ‘godly care also in quieting the inward dissensions and disturbances within the Christian bishops themselves’. , Foxe, ‘Acts and Monuments’, viii. 600–1Google Scholar ; the clergy did not have special privileges and immunity as a right, independent of imperial wishes. Foxe often upheld the claims of the emperor to be a critic of Rome and a judge in ecclesiastical affairs. The pope had no superiority among other bishops, ‘much less above the emperor’, Ibid. i. 296; ii. 705; Collinson, Godly People, 112.

111 ‘To the Quenes Moste Excellent Maiestie Quene Elizabeth’. , Foxe, Acts and Monuments 1563Google Scholar , preface, sig. Bir-v. See , Olsen, John Foxe, 194-5Google Scholar.

112 Ibid. 194.

113 ‘To the Quenes Moste Excellent Maiestie Quene Elizabeth’, Foxe, op. cit. sig. Bi r-v.

114 ‘Prefaces to the Acts and Monuments’, in Pratt, J. (ed.), The Life and Defence of John Foxe, London 1870Google Scholar ; also in , Foxe, ‘Acts and Monuments’, i. pp. i–xxxviGoogle Scholar.

115 , Foxe, De censura, i. sig. A4; see n. 1.Google Scholar

116 , Collinson, Godly People, 113.Google Scholar

117 John Foxe, ‘A Sermon of Christ Crucified, preached at Pauls Cross, the Friday before Easter, commonly called Good Friday. A.D. 1570. Written and dedicated to all such as labour and are heavy laden in conscience, to be read for their spiritual comfort’, repr. in British Reformers, xii, London 1831, gi-5. Olsen, op. cit. 195. See also ‘A Book of Christian Prayers’ (1578), printed in Private Prayers, Put forth by Authority during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (Parker Society 1851), 462–7Google Scholar.

118 One of the monarch's duties was fulfilled ‘in congregating the clergy, when need is of any counsel or election, to hear their learning in causes propounded; and, according to the truth learned, to direct his judgement’, Foxe, ‘Acts and Monuments’, i. 26.

119 Collinson has suggested that Foxe disliked the precedent of a bishop excommunicating and judging a king, and that he would have regarded it as valid only during the Marian persecutions. In Foxe's opinion, Mary had relinquished her God-given right of sovereignty and, having been transformed from an instrument of God to an agent of Antichrist, was unable to be head of the true Church. Collinson believes that the Ambrosian model was only acceptable to Foxe in such circumstances and not in the reign of a godly prince, Collinson, op. cit. 114.

120 Foxe, De censura, preface, sig. C1.

121 ‘Apparuit hoc in Ambrosio quem modo citavimus, cuius tantum valuit authoritas, ut Caesarianam etiam ferociam nullis alioqui armis nee legibus superabilem edomuit’, ibid, ii. sig. C7V.

122 Ibid. viii. sig. E5V. , Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, ed. Radice, B., trans. Williamson, G. A., London 1965, vi. 34. 271Google Scholar.

123 , Foxe, ‘Acts an d Monuments’, ii. 408.Google Scholar

124 Ibid. ii. 407.

125 When Latimer wrote to King Henry vni, to restore ‘the free liberty of reading the Holy Scriptures’, he reminded the king of the example of King David, who ‘was not ashamed’ to.take the prophet Nathan's advice, Ibid. vii. 510. Foxe commented that this letter revealed Latimer's ‘good conscience to God, his good-will towards the king, the duty of a right pastor unto truth, his tender care to the commonwealth, and specially to the church of Christ’. He marvelled at ‘the great boldness and divine stoutness’ of Latimer to admonish ‘so mighty a prince… in defence of Christ's gospel’ and concluded that ‘the bishops and prelates of this realm’ should follow Latimer's example. For his advice, Latimer received the thanks and goodwill of the prince, and was advanced to the see of Worcester, Ibid. vii. 511. The emphasis therefore was on the duty of the godly prince to be pleased to get rid of flattery and to accept wholesome advice, rather than upon any episcopal authority above the monarch.

126 For instance, Ibid. i. 349. When Aidan rebuked the king for criticising a charitable act, the king asked for his forgiveness. But Foxe praised the great humility and devoutness of the king rather than any authority of the bishop. It is perhaps significant that such meekness in a king was thought to be exceptional; Aidan wept that ‘“this king cannot live long. The people is not worthy to have such a prince as he is, to reign amongst them”’. Although the bishop took his duties as the king's spiritual advisor seriously, nevertheless he had no actual authority over the king in this story. See Collinson, P., The Religion of Protestants. The Church in English society, 1559-1625, Oxford 1982, 15Google Scholar.

127 For an analysis of the political situation, see Jones, N. L., Faith by Statute. Parliament and the Settlement of 1559, London 1982, 130–6Google Scholar . See also Thompson, W. D. J. Cargill, ‘A. Marte n an d the Elizabethan debate on episcopacy’, in Essays in Modem English Church History, Bennett, G. V. and Walsh, J. D. (eds), London 1966, 44–75, esp. at pp. 47-9.Google Scholar The jurisdiction of episcopacy came from the Crown.

128 For a list of some of Foxe's illustrious friends, see , Mozley, John Foxe and his Book, 103.Google Scholar Through such friends he would have been aware of the realities of the political situation. Elizabeth would not take the title of head of the Church, but neither would she relinquish any power over the Church which she believed was hers by right.

129 See above n. 16; see also Jones, op. cit.; and Mozley, op. cit. 80.

130 Foxe, Acts and Monuments’, viii. 12, 22.

131 Foxe described the Six Articles as’ erroneous, pernicious, repugnant and contrarious to true doctrine’, Ibid. v. 359.

132 Ibid. viii. 22-3.

133 Ibid. viii. 23.

134 Having referred to numerous Old Testament kings, he observed that ‘by these and many other examples, it is to be seen, that kings and princes in old time… had the dealing also in ecclesiastical matters’, Ibid. i. 20.

135 Ibid. Cf. ‘Christian kings b e sovereigns over the priests… and may command the priests to do their offices’, Ibid. v. 96.

136 For instance, kings ‘ought of duty to do’ what ‘we know both David and Salomon and other good princes have done, that is… whiles the pope and his prelates slug and sleep, or else mischievously withstand them, do bridle the priests’ sensuality, and drive them to do their duty, and keep them still to it’, Ibid. iii. 97. In the absence of a godly episcopate, kings in the past had overthrown idols, taken away superstition and ‘set up again the true worshipping of God’.

137 Ibid. i. 25-6. See Jewel, Works, iv. 986.

138 Ibid. i. 26.

139 Ibid. v. 95. Th e Bishops’ Book read that ‘we may not think that it doth appertain unto the office of kings and Princes to preach and teach, to administer the sacrament, to absoyle, to excommunicate, and such other things belonging to the office an d administration of bishops and priests’. Lloyd, C., Formularies of Faith Put Forth by Authority during the Reign of Henry VIII, Oxford 1825, 121Google Scholar.

140 ‘To the Quenes moste Excellent Maiestie Quene Elizabeth’, Foxe, Acts and Monuments 1563, sig. Bir. ‘To the Right Vertuous Most Excellent, and Noble Princesse, Quene Elizabeth’, Ibid. 1570, sig. ir. See Jewel, Works, iv. 978, 985. In the dedicatory preface to the Acts and Monuments 1563, Foxe referred to the queen as the ‘defendour of the faith, and supreme governour… as well in causes ecclesiasticall, as also to the temporall state appertaining’, though ‘next vnder the Lorde’. But, in the 1570 edition, Foxe changed the queen's title to the ‘defendour of Christes Fayth and Gospel’, and the words ‘supreme governour’ were changed to ‘principal governour both of the Realme and also ouer the sayd Church of England and Ireland’. This was possibly a response to his opponents’ criticisms of the queen's headship. Significantly, he also re-emphasised that she ruled ‘vnder Christ the supreme head’, Olsen, John Foxe, 191.

141 , Foxe, ‘Acts and Monuments’, ii. 84.Google Scholar

142 Ibid. ii. 428. For instance, Ibid. ii. 280, 296.

143 Part of this ambiguity can be recognised in the description of the monarch as a ship's captain, unable to perform the necessary tasks yet remaining the overseer, Ibid. v. 96-8. Tunstal and Stokesley's letter concluded that, although the king could not be taken as supreme head of the Church because he could not exercise the chief office of the Church in preaching and ministering of the sacrament, it was, nevertheless, ‘not requisite, in every body natural, that the head should exercise either all manner of offices in the body, or the chief office of the same’. The bishops were described as the body's ‘eyes’. See Jewel, Works, ii. 942.

144 ‘Tantum id optare possum ut episcopi quorum sine controversia pollet in Ecclesia authoritas gravissima, quandoquidem ipsis ubique adesse non datur, inferioribus idcirco quasique secundariis ministris huisce simul communionem muneris demandent’, Foxe, De censura, ix. sig. E7v.

145 Foxe, ‘Acts and Monuments’, i. 50-1 -as was praised in the person of Bishop Ridley, or Bishop Hooper. Foxe's failure to defend episcopal jurisdiction might have been a factor in the decision by Archbishop Parker to account for the episcopal rights and privileges of the Canterbury see. RSTC II, 19292. Parker, M., De Antiquilale Britannicae Ecclesiae el privilegiis Ecclesiae Cantuariensis, cum Archiepiscopis eiusdem 70, London 1572.Google Scholar Parker included a detailed description of the procedures of the church courts.

146 Foxe, op. cit. i. 60. Foxe described the ‘pitiful state’ of the West under the Antichristian bishop of Rome. His excommunications were ‘like a madman's dagger, drawn at every trifle’, Ibid. ii. 420.

147 Ibid. ii. 231.

148 Ibid. ii. 902. As Collinson has shown from records for the diocese of Ely, attempts to reconcile excommunicants to the Church were often unsuccessful. Yet Foxe considered this to be the main aim of excommunication. In his 1570 Sermon of Christ Crucified, the Gospel not only bound and loosed, but was also the ‘word of reconciliation’, sig. Cii. See also idem, ‘Acts and Monuments’, v. 192. But if Foxe was in agreement with the ecclesiastical ordinances of Geneva, that ‘all corrections are but medicinal, to bring back sinners to our Lord’, he did not attempt, as he did in De censura, to suggest an alternative to the episcopal courts. , Collinson, Religion of Protestants, 40, 214-17Google Scholar ; Price, F. D., ‘The abuses of excommunication and the decline of ecclesiastical discipline under Queen Elizabeth’, EHR lvii (1942), 106–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar . The decline of church discipline was one of the platforms for the Admonition Controversy, RSTC II, 24184: Walter Travers, A full and plain declaration of Ecclesiastical Discipline out of the word of God and of the declining of the Church of England from the same, Zurich 1574; STC, 4714-5: Thomas Cartwright, The second replie of Thomas Cartwright, against Maister Doctor Whitgiftes Second Answer touching the Churche Discipline, 1575, 1577. See Collinson, P., The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, London 1967, pt 6, ch. i, ‘The Book of Discipline’, 291–302Google Scholar ; see also Brook, V. J. K., A Life of Archbishop Parker, Oxford 1962, 334Google Scholar . No mention was made of De censura during the 1570s debate on discipline.

149 A Letter of John Foxe to Archbishop Whitgift, Lambet h Palace Librar y MS, no. 2010, fos 117-21V, n.d., a t fo. 118r, cited in Olsen, John Foxe, 158.

150 , Foxe, ‘Acts and Monuments’, i. 26Google Scholar ; cf. , Jewel, Works, iii. 361Google Scholar.

151 Foxe included with approval the martyr, John Lambert's, reference to St Gregory, who wrote that ‘the key of loosing is the word of the corrector, who, rebuking doth discredit the fault, which many times he knoweth not, that committeth the same’: Foxe, op. cit. 192; cf. Jewel, op. cit. 362.

152 Foxe, op. cit. i. 58; also i. 18. Cf. Jewel, op. cit. 365, 369, 371.

153 Foxe, op. cit. i. 58; also i. 65.

154 Ibid. 1. 18.

155 Ibid. 1. 36.

156 In his first reply to Whitgift, Cartwright had made the insinuation that’ I perceive you fear M. Fox is an enemy unto your archbishop and primate’. Whitgift, J., Works (Parker Society 1851-1853), ii. 335Google Scholar.

157 Whitgift closed the part of’ The Defence of the Answer to the Admonition’ dealing with episcopal authority and superiority ‘with the words of that worthy man… Master Fox’, quoting from ‘Acts and Monuments’, i. 50, Whitgift, Works, ii. 333-4. For the debate between Whitgift and Cartwright after the publication of STC, 10847-9: An Admonition to the Parliament, 1572, when- both quoted Foxe in order to support their views, see , Olsen, John Foxe, 152–5.Google Scholar For the Admonition Controversy, see , Collinson, Godly People, ch. xiii, ‘John Field and Elizabethan Puritanism’, 335–70, esp. at pp. 339-41; and idem, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, pt 3, ‘The first Presbyterians’, 101-55, esp. at pp. 118-20Google Scholar.

158 Foxe to Archbishop Whitgift, fo. 120r.