Foxe's decision to expand the 'second age' of the church, briefly mentioned in the 1563 edition of the martyrology, into a separate, second book in 1570 'contayning the next 300. yeres following' the 'Ten Persecutions of the Church' allowed him much more space to broaden the historical and polemical foundations of his underlying narrative. In this passage, he took the oppotunity to do so, firstly in assembling the 'domestical histories' to confute the proposition that British Christianity owed its origins to Rome. The issue was, as he put it, 'a great controversie in these our popish days'. Foxe's response was both to deny the deduction and to assail the premise. Even if British Christianity owed something to Rome, especially at the time of St Augustine of Canterbury, it 'foloweth not therby, that we must therfore fetch our religion from thence still, as from the chiefe welhead and fountayne of all godlines'. The Christianity which then prevailed in Rome was very different: 'For then, neither was any vniuersal Pope aboue al churches and councils...neither any name or vse of the Masse....Neither any sacrifice propiciatory....Neither were then any images of sayntes departed....Likewise neyther reliques nor peregrinations...'. His attack upon the premise was undertaken with seven documented 'probations'. The nature of Foxe's argument is such that he seems to have been aware that the evidence being adduced here was, if not flimsy, certainly deductive and capable of being construed in different ways.

The second issue which he was able to confront was the importance of the monarchy in England to his overarching narrative. By emphasising the significance of King Lucius and his conversion, and cataloguing the succession of British kings until the coming of the Saxons, Foxe was beginning, even at this early part of his narrative, to construct one of the important building-blocks for his argument about the dynamic forces that would triumph in the protestant reformation. It was also a moment for an earnest aside on 'what incommoditie commeth by lacke of succession'. With Elizabeth's succession such an unresolved problem, a present danger to the protestant cause in England in 1570 as Foxe saw it, his reminder of how the English 'inwrapped themselues in such miserye and desolation, which yet to this day amongst them remayneth' had long-term consequences, which he did not hesitate to emphasise, and contemporary resonances, which he did not need to insist upon.

How did Foxe put together his seven 'probations' describing the pre-Augustinian possibilities of the Christian conversion of Britain? His proofs were almost entirely extracted from the Magdeburg Centuries volumes I-III (mainly vol. 2, chs. 2-3). It is interesting to note that a similar list, however, appeared at the beignining of Matthew Parker's De Antiquitate Britanniae (1572). Although both entering the same debate, Foxe and the De Antiquitate differ in certain ways. They both cite Gildas, Tertullian's Adversus Judaeos, Origen's Fourth Homily on Ezechiel, and Nicephorus. The De Antiquitate adds evidence from Julius Caesar whilst Foxe adduces that of Bede, Peter of Cluny and the epistle of Eleutherius to King Lucian (which he prints). Foxe's source for this letter is interesting. It had been printed in William Lambarde, Archaionomia (London: 1568), fol 131. It is possible that Foxe simply reproduced it from that source. However, comparing the two sources leads us to suppose that he had perhaps been given the epistle in manuscript form. It is possible that he had completed the drafting of this book before the publication of Lambarde's book in 1568. This, at least, would explain why Foxe did not cite the Anglo-Saxon law-codes in Book Two from Lambarde, choosing instead to take them directly from Brompton's Chronicle.

Matthew Phillpott and Mark Greengrass
University of Sheffield

Britanniam in Christianam consentire religionem.

John Wade, University of Sheffield

Britain to agree to the Christian religion