Thomas Holmes informed against so many people that even Foxe is reluctant to credit him as a martyr; yet it was not enough to save him. Why he was treated with such unusual severity is unclear.

See Phillipe de Commines, De Carlo Octavo…et bello Neapolitano Commentarii, trans. Johann Sleidan (Paris, 1561), pp. 205-12. Notice how, once again, Foxe is emphasizing the evil effects of persecution upon families.

This is the 'Yomand Dorman' (i.e., yeoman Dorman) listed before by Foxe.

For other evidence of Foxe's conducting inquiries among those still living about past persecutions in the chiltern, see the sources used for information on William Tilesworth and Thomas Chase: for information on both of these men, Foxe used aged informants whose accounts proved remarkably accurate.

Thomas Dorman, a Catholic polemicist and critic of Foxe. Foxe refers, in his marginal note, to the opening sentence of Thomas Dorman's dedication to his A proofe of certayne articles in religion (Antwerp, 1564), STC 7062, in which Dorman described himself as having been 'a young novyce of Calvins religion.

Dorman never said this. Foxe has apparently confused Dorman with Thomas Harding, who called Foxe's book, 'that huge dungehill of your stinking martyrs which you have intituled the Actes and Monumentes' (Thomas Harding, Confutation of a Book intituled an Apology of the Church of England [Antwerp, 1565], STC 12762, fos. 13v-14r). The phrase afterwards became something of a Catholic trope.

Dorman never said this. Foxe has apparently confused Dorman with Thomas Harding, who called Foxe's book, 'that huge dungehill of your stinking martyrs which you have intituled the Actes and Monumentes' (Thomas Harding, Confutation of a Book intituled an Apology of the Church of England [Antwerp, 1565], STC 12762, fos. 13v-14r). The phrase afterwards became something of a Catholic trope.

This section epitomizes Foxe approaching one of his major themes, the existence of the True Church before Luther, from a novel angle. In the preceding sections dealing with the Lollards in the dioceses of Lincoln and London, Foxe emphasized their numbers and tried to show that an understanding of the gospel preceded the Reformation. In this section, Foxe tries to make the same point, by providing the examples of a few well-known Reform-minded English clergyman - John Colet and William Grocyn - and also the examples of two English anticlerical authors, Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower. (It should be emphasized that all of the figures discussed in this section were, contrary to Foxe's implications, orthodox Catholics - particularly Colet and Grocyn - and that none of them can justly considered a Lollard sympathiser, much less a proto-Protestant).

For Colet and Grocyn, Foxe's sources were various writings of Erasmus, although he judiciously edited them. For Gower and Chaucer he draws largely on John Bale's Catalogus.

Thomas S. Freeman
University of Sheffield

Foxe is interested in demonstrating the zeal of the Lollards in acquiring godly literature, but this is also an indication of the affluence of many of these Lollards. On the importance of books to the Lollards see Margaret Aston, 'Lollardy and Literacy' in Lollards and Reformers: Images and and literacy in late medieval England (London, 1984), pp. 1-47.

The following account of Colet is abridged from Erasmus's mini- biography in Colet in his letter to Justas Jonas, dated 13 June 1521. (The letter is printed is epistle 1211 in The Correspondence of Erasmus, Letters 1122-1251, trans. R. A. B. Mynors and annotated Pieter G. Bietenholz [Toronto, 1998]; the section on Colet is on pp. 233-43). Foxe's abridgement involves more than saving space. While Foxe is accurate in what prints, he omits certain details Erasmus provided - such as Colet's celibacy, his avoiding the company of laymen, his desire to join the Carthusians and his strong approval of auricular confession - that do not fit with Foxe's idea of a proto-Protestant divine.

Foxe is interested in demonstrating the zeal of the Lollards in acquiring godly literature, but this is also an indication of the affluence of many of these Lollards. On the importance of books to the Lollards see Margaret Aston, 'Lollardy and Literacy' in Lollards and Reformers: Images and and literacy in late medieval England (London, 1984), pp. 1-47.

Foxe is repeating Erasmus's estimate of Bishop Fitzjames's age. The bishop's date of birth is unknown, but he must have been in his seventies at this time.

In other words, Colet argued that the gospel command, 'Feed my sheep' was meant spiritually, but not materially. The passage had been used to argue that the clergy were enjoined to hospitality, but Colet's understanding of the passage was hardly novel.

In other words, Colet criticized those who read their sermons from notes, rather than delivering it from memory.

William Tyndale, An Answere unto Sir Thomas Mores Dialoge, ed. A. M. O'Donnell and Jared Wicks (Washington, DC, 2001), p. 168.