An account of his life taken from The History and Antiquities of Boston by Pishey Thompson (1856) [continued].
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account of this celebrated man as our lhnits will allow, we shall take the memoir furnished by Mr. TOWNSEND in the edition of the "Acts and Monuments," published in 1841, as the text of our narrative, drawing occasionally upon other sources, and append as notes, Dr. Maitland’s observations upon the different controverted points, as well as other elucidations, furnished by friends, and our own researches. JOHN FOX was born at Boston, in Lincolnshire, in 1517, the year in which LUTHER published his Theses against the Church of Rome.1 His parents were of respectable rank in the town of Boston; but it is remarkable that his son, in the memoir ascribed to him, says nothing about them. He tells us, indeed, that his father, in his youth, was very forward and diligent in his learning; that, at an early age, he (the martyrologist) lost his father, and his mother married a second husband, but does not give his name.2 It appears from the memoir that this second husband was a rigid Romanist, and educated Fox in the strictest manner in the established doctrines of that Church. It also appears that at the early age of sixteen (1533) he was sent to college. All his biographers, following this memoir, state that he was first sent to Brazennose College; but this fact cannot be traced in the history of that college, nor is there any record of his admission. WOOD,3 however, among the Bachelors of Divinity, 1538, has “May 17th, John Fox, of Brazennose College; he was afterwards of St. Mary Magdalen, and the noted martyrologist.” This appears to decide the question. At this college (Brazennose) he had for his chamber-fellow Alexander Nowell, afterwards Dean of St. Paul’s, then aged twenty-two. Their tutor was John Hawarden, or Harding, to whom Fox dedicated his “Syllogisticon.”4 How long he remained at Brazennose, is not recorded. WOOD says he took his degree of B.D. in 1538, and M.A. at Magdalen College, June 6th, 1543, and was elected a Fellow of this latter college in 1543.5 In consequence of the great contests occasioned by the Reformation, and his conviction of the truth of the reformed doctrines, after a long and arduous mental struggle, he was tried for heresy in 1545; and is said, by his son, to have been expelled; but it is more probable he resigned his fellowship to avoid that result, since we do not find any account of his trial or expulsion in the records of Magdalen College.6 It appears very probable that John Fox owed the elements of his education to his mother’s second husband, who, being a Romanist in the strictest sense, upon Fox’s secession from that faith, refused him his right to his father’s estate, and thus reduced him to beggary.
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1 Dr. MAITLAND assigns reasons for thinking that Fox was born in 1516. It is remarkable, that as the memoir was originally written, there was not any date assigned as the year of his birth. Some corrector of the MS. has placed in the margin, “Anno salutis humanae, 1517,”—M. 2 There is reason to believe that the name of this second husband was Richard Melton. Melton, however, is not a Boston name; it does not occur either in the Corporation Records or the Parish Registers. 3 Fasti, vol. i. col. 107, BLISS’ edition. 4 We have seen a statement that John Harding advised Fox’s step-father to send him to Oxford. Fox, in his dedication of his Syltogisticon to Harding, calls him his “father;” but this was only in allusion to his having been his friend in early youth, and probably instrumental in his being sent to college.—B. 5 There is some error in these latter dates. The |
Register of Magdalen College states he was elected Fellow of the college in 1539. 6 On the contrary, the College Register records his resignation, using the word “sponte.” Dr. MAITLAND considers the story of Fox’s trial and expulsion to relate to a person named JULIAN PALMER, who was a Fellow of Magdalen, and expelled for heresy about the time that Fox is stated to have suffered that disgrace. “Certainly many of the circumstances of the two cases were identical, though the results were different. Palmer was expelled, Fox resigned.”—B. It is, however, very strange that the writer of the memoir, whoever it was, should inave confused the name of one party with the circumstances of the other; and it almost passes belief that the son could have been that writer, and thus ignorantly have stigmatised his father, when the truth might have been so easily ascertained by a reference to the College Register. |
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