FOXE AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION, c1539-1587
Collected manuscript sources from the British Library, London

"The success of his Actes and Monuments was immediate. It was universally read, it aroused a storm of argument, it was ordered to be chained in churches for the general edification of the people. ... As a mere performance, the Actes and Monuments is without parallel. Foxe was an astounding virtuoso, whose movement and energy never flag."
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature

This microfilm project brings together letters, tracts, treatises, sermons and other papers of John Foxe (1516-1587), the Protestant writer, historian and martyrologist.  We include:

• Letters addressed to Queen Elizabeth I and many other major figures revealing Foxe’s views on religious intolerance in England; 
• Manuscript extracts from his most famous work, Actes and Monuments of These Latter and Perilous Days, widely considered to be one of the fundamental works of English Puritan Theology.
• Correspondence from reformers and politicians such as Hugh Latymer, Richard Cox, John Knox, Cardinal Pole, Thomas Cranmer, Lady Jane Grey and Thomas Bentham.
• Proposals for a revised Canon Law which had been devised during the reign of Henry VIII, Foxe’s account of John Wicliffe and his followers, antipapastical treatises and sermons.

This project is an excellent resource for historians and literary scholars of the sixteenth century and those seeking a deeper understanding of martyrdom, religious persecution and the early stages of English Protestantism.