The fact that the scriptural reference in the gloss 'Astiterunt reges terræ, & principes conuenerunt in vnum aduersus Dominum & Christum eius' is given in Latin is probably because it opposes royal intentions and God in such a stark way; if so, this tells us something about what Foxe felt should be kept from vulgar eyes and ears (however, it would be simple enough to follow up the reference in an English Bible).

This section may be compared with the reproduction of the 'Rubric of the Mass' in Book X: as on the earlier occasion, the glosses constitute a running attack based on interlinked themes against the content of catholic devotion. In contrast to the glosses next to the rubric of the mass, the tone here is less varied: there is nothing like the mocking of the arbitrariness of the mass found in book X. The reason for this difference is that the subject is not so much a pointless if insulting ritual, but the place of Mary in the Christian scheme, and so the glosses seek, firmly but without mockery, to put her in a more modest position than that accorded to her by the catholic texts criticised. The organising principle of the critique is the divine hierarchy, and many of the glosses point out that the primer and psalter contain ideas which displace God and (especially) Christ from their places in that hierarchy ('One mediatour betwene God and men, the man Iesus Christ'; 'Wrong mediation'; 'The office of Christ geuen to our Lady'; 'If Maryes merites might helpe vs, then Christ dyed in vayne'; 'Treason agaynst Christes person and dignitye'; 'All iudgement is geuē to Christ alone, and before him the virgin also her self shalbe iudged'; 'If our Lady be all in all then God belyke sitteth idle in heauen';' O impious blasphemye'; 'If Mary forgeue sinnes, then is our fayth in Christ in vayne'; 'The Deuill and the Pope sayth so and not God'; 'Mary made a commaunder of Christ'; 'Christ made a captiue and a prisoner in the Popes Church'; 'Our Lady made equall with God in the Church Rome'). One consequence of the misdirection of devotion is that it does the misdirector no spiritual good, and various glosses point out the vain or false nature of the devotional formulations they lie next to ('False merite'; 'Vayne trust'; 'Wrong inuocation'; 'False trust'). As with the critique of the mass in Book X, such a misdirection of effort is not merely useless, it is also dangerous because it constitutes an insult to God, or blasphemy ('Horrible blasphemye and derogation to Christes bloud'; 'Derogation of the Crosse of Christ'; 'Derogation of Christes passion'; 'Horrible blasphemy agaynst the Lord'), and furthermore it invests objects and subjects with a spiritual significance they do not deserve, which is idolatry ('Idolatrye to the material Crosse'; 'Blasphemous Idolatrye'; 'Manifest Idolatrye'; 'Idolatrye of the cloysterers'; 'These wordes stincke of blasphemous Idolatrye'; 'The Church of Rome conuict of manifest idolatry'). Thus, Foxe's critique works through a few intertwined points which he makes again and again.

The entire section on the passages on the Virgin Mary in the Sarum missal and the Psalter of Our Lady first appears in the 1570 edition. It takes as its logical starting point the previous section on the Marian government's attempts to ban seditious and heretical literature. Here Foxe is contrasting the literature which the Marian church championed with the literature it banned. This section is less of anattack on the cult of the Virgin Mary per se, than an attack on the popular Wayland primers which contained the versions of the Sarum primer quoted by Foxe. The Wayland primers were sponsored by the Marian government and were a popular and effective means of disseminating a Christocentric catholic piety to lay people (see Duffy, pp. 526-27, 538-39 and 542-43). Foxe sought to undermine the Wayland primers, partly through misquotation and partly through linking them to the Psalter of Our Lady, a thirteenth-century work which was attributed to St Bonaventure. The theology of the Psalter of Our Lady was sufficiently distinct from that of the catholic reformation to cause embarrassment. And Foxe was ready to alter the passages he was quoting to achieve the desired result. (For Foxe's polemical objectives in printing this section see Freeman [2004]).

This section is a very revealing example of how clever and ruthless a propagandist Foxe could be.

Foxe is quoting from one of the primer (book for the instruction of children) printed by John Wayland. These works were sponsored by Mary's government (see Duffy, pp. 526-27 and 538-39). It should be cautioned that Foxe's quotations from the primer are not always accurate (for details see Freeman [2004]).