1576 Edition | Book 4 | Page 276 
tyng the deliueraunce of the King his brother made into Fraunce, and kept with the French king. At length it was so agreed & concluded with þe Emperor, that K. Rich. should be released for 14000. pounds. Of the which money part should remaine to the duke of Austrige, the rest should be þe Emperors. The somme of which mony was here gathered and made in England, of Chalices, crosses, shrines, candlestickes and other church plate, also with publike contribution of friers, Abbeys, and other subiects of the Realme. Wherof part was presently payd, and for the residue remainyng, hostages and pledges were taken: which was about the v. yere of his raigne. MarginaliaAn. 1195.And then was it obteyned of the Pope that priests might celebrate with chalices of Latin & tinne. And so was graunted & continued long after, which myne author (in his Chronicle entituled Eulogium) MarginaliaEx Chronico cui titulus Eulogium.doth testifie hymselfe to haue sene. At what tyme this foresayde mony was payd, and the ostages geuen for the raunsome of this K. I haue an old story, that sayth how þe> foresaid Duke of Austrige shortly after was plagued by God with v. sondry plagues: MarginaliaThe iust punishment of God vpon the Duke of Austrige.first with burning of his chiefe townes. Secondly, with the drownyng of x. thousand of hys men in a floud happening no man could tell how. Thirdly by turning all the eares of hys corne field into wormes. Fourthly, by taking away almost all the nobles of hys lande by death. Fifthly, by breaking his owne legge, fallyng from hys horse, which leg he was compelled to cut of with hys own hands and after dyed vpon the same. Who then at his death is sayd to forgeue K. Richard 50000 Markes, and sent home the hostage, that was with hym. ex variis Chron. The boke intituled Eulogium before mentioned declareth thus, that the sayd Limpoldus duke Austrige fell in displeasure with the bishop of Rome, and died excommunicate, the next yere after. an. 1196.
[Back to Top]MarginaliaAn. 1196.Thus the sayd king Richard beyng ransomed, as hath bene declared from the couetous captiuity of the Emperour, was restored agayne, and made hiys repayre into England. At whose returne, Erle Ihon his brother resorting to hym wyth humble submission: desired to be pardoned of his transgressions. To whom King Richard answering agayne: MarginaliaThe answere of K. Richard to hys brother.would God (sayth he) this your trespasse, as it dyeth wyth me in obliuion, so it may remayne wyth you in remembraunce. And so gentlely forgaue hym. And after he had agayne recoured hys holdes and castels caused hymselfe to be crowned agayne. Which done, he made hys power against the French king, and draue him out of Normandy. After that he turned his viage agaynst the Welshemen, and subdued them.
[Back to Top]MarginaliaAn. 1197.The next yeare folowing: which was the. 1197. yeare of the Lord, Philip the frēch kyng brake truce made betwene hym and Kyng Richard, whereupon the king was compelled to sayle ouer againe to Normandy to withstand the malice of hys enemy. About which time, my story recordeth of one, called of some, Fulco: some say, he was the Archbishop of Roane called Gaulter. This Fulco beyng then in England, and comming to the kynges presence, sayd vnto him with great courage and boldnes. Thou hast O mighty King, three daughters MarginaliaThree daughters of the kyng noted.very vicious and of euill disposition: take good heede of them, and betimes prouide for them good husbands: least by vntimely bestowing of the same, thou shalt not onely incurre great hurt & damage, but also vtter ruine and destruction to thy selfe. To whom the kyng in a rage sayd: Thou lying and mocking hipocrite, thou knowest not where thou art, or what thou sayest: I thinke thou art mad or not well in thy wittes, for I haue neuer a daughter as all the world knoweth, and therfore thou opē lyer get thee out of our presence. To whom Fulco aunswered: no, and like your grace I lye not, but say truth: for you haue iij. daughters, which continually frequent your court, and wholy possess your person: and such iij. whores & naughty packes as neuer the like hath beene heard of. I meane mischieuous pride, gredy couetousnes, and filthy luxurie. And therfore againe I say, O King, beware of them, and out of hand prouide mariages for them, least in not so doyng, thou vtterly vndoe both thy selfe and all the whole realme.
[Back to Top]The which hys wordes, the Kyng tooke in good part: with correction of himselfe, & confession of the same. Wherupon incontinently he called his Lordes and Barons before hym, vnto whom he declared the commoning & monition of Fulco, who had willed him to beware of hys three daughters: pride, auarice, and luxury, with counsell out of hand to marry them: least further discommoditie should ensue both to hym and the whole realme, whose good coūsell (my Lordes) I entende to follow, not doubting of all your consentes therunto. Wherefore here before you all, I geue my daughter swellinge pride to wife, to the proudeTemplars: my greedy daughter auarice to the couetous order of Cistercian Monkes, and last of all, my filthy daughter luxury, to the riotous prelats of the church, whom I thinke to be very meete men for her: and so seuerally well agreeing to all their natures that the like matches in this our Realme are not to be found for them. And thus much concerning Fulco.
[Back to Top]Not long after this, it befell that a certaine noble personage (Lord of Lemonice in litle Britaine, Widowmarus by name) found a great substaunce of treasure both of gold and siluer hid in the ground: wherof a great part he sent to Kyng Richard, as chiefe Lord and Prince ouer the whole countrey. Which the Kyng refused, saying he woulde eyther haue all or none, MarginaliaHe that all would haue, shall all forgoe.for that he was the principall chieftayne ouer the land. But the finder would not condescend to that. Wherefore the Kyng layd siege to a Castell of hys called Galuz, thinking the treasure to lye there. But the keepers and warders of the castell seeing themselues not sufficient to wythstand the Kyng, offered to hym the castel, desiring to depart with life and armour. To this the Kyng would in no wise graunt, but bidde them to reenter the castell agayne, and to defend it in all the forceable wise they could. MarginaliaCouetous gredines plagued.It so befell, that as the kyng wyth the Duke of Brabant went about the castell, vewing the places therof: a souldiour within, named Bertandus Cordoun, stroke the Kyng with an arrow in the arme, MarginaliaThe death of K. Richard the first.wherupon the yron remayning and festering in the wound, the Kyng within ix. dayes after dyed: who because he was not content wyth the halfe of the treasure that an other mā found, lost all his owne treasure that he had. The king being thus wounded caused the man that stroke him, to be brought vnto hym, and asked the cause of him, why he so wounded hym. Who aunswered agayne (as the story sayth) that he thought to kill rather then to be killed. And what punishment soeuer he shoulde susteine, he was cōtent, so that he might kill him, which had before killed his father and brethren. MarginaliaK. Richard forgeueth hym that killed hym.
Ex bibliothe. ca. Cartensi.
Ex Gualtero Hemyngford, monacho. Gisburnensi.The kyng hearng his wordes, frely forgaue him, and caused an hundreth shillings to be geuen him. Albeit (as the story addeth) after the death of the Kyng, the duke of Brabāce, after great tormentes caused him to be hanged. Ex historia Regis Richardi 2. cui initium. De patre istius Bruti. &c. The story of Gisburne sayth, that the killer of Kyng Richard, commyng to the French kyng, thinking to haue a great reward, was commaunded to be drawen a sonder with horse, & his quarters to be hanged vp.
An other story affirmeth, and Gisburne parly doth testifie the same, that a litle before the death of King Richard: three Abbotes of the order Cisterciā came to him, to whom he was confessed. And when he saw them somewhat stay at his absolutiō, had these wordes: that he dyd willyngly commit his body to the earth, to be eaten of wormes: MarginaliaVaine fear of purgatory.and his soule to the fire of Purgatory there to be tormented till the iudgement, in the hope of God his mercy. Ex Iornalensi. Gisburn. & alijs.MarginaliaEx Iornal. Gisburnensi. & alijs
[Back to Top]About the reigne of this kyng, the sayd Iornalensis maketh mention of Roger archbishop of Yorke, MarginaliaMōkes put out and secular prieses receaued.which put out of his Church the Monkes and placed for them seculare Priestes: saying that he would rather wishe Ecclesiasticall benefices to be geuen to wanton Priestes then to abhominable monkes, and that Thurstinus did sinne neuer worse in all his lyfe then in buildyng that house for monkes &c. An other story I haue which sayth, that this was the Byshop not of Yorke, but of Couentry.
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CloseThis passage reflects the remarkable English protestant reversal of the accepted historiography of the reign of King John, whom medieval chronicles had, almost without exception, vilified. The process had begun with William Tyndale's The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), which presented John's reign as that of a good king battling heroically against papal tyranny and it reached its canonical limits with Bale's drama, King Johan (see Caroline Levin, Propaganda in the English Reformation: Heroic and Villainous Images of King John [Lewiston, NY, 1988), esp. pp. 55-104). These reassessments all had, however, the weakness that they were not based on newly-discovered evidence, but a skewed reading of the sources that were already common knowledge. Foxe's account, at the first read, seems to rectify that deficiency, supported a favourable account of John's reign with quiverfuls of new sources: Matthew Paris, Roger of Howden's Chronicle, the life of John by Ralph Niger, Caxton's edition of the Brut, and the fourteenth-century chronicle known as the Eulogium Historiarum. These are carefully enumerated in the marginalia to the 1563 account, which would become a commonplace for English protestant polemicists thereafter.
[Back to Top]The account of John's reign is surprisingly detailed and circumstantial. It begins with Arthur, John's nephew, challenging his uncle's rights to the crown, supported by Philip Augustus, King of France. It alludes to Philip's conquest of Normandy before concentrating at length on the dispute over the election of the archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Innocent III's rejection of the royal candidate and installation of his own nominee, Stephen Langton. The consequences (the papal interdict, the royal confiscation of ecclesiastical lands and revenues, the failures of mediation and the excommunication of John) are all given substantial coverage. Following a digression to describe (and denounce) the Fourth Lateran Council, Foxe's narrative picks up the continued scheming of the clergy against the king, the Dauphin Louis' invasion, John's reconciliation with some of the rebellious nobles (Magna Carta goes unmentioned) and the king's death (by poisoning). The account was the first, thorough 'post-medieval' narrative of John's reign to be based on such a wide range of sources.
[Back to Top]Yet, as this project has argued in extensor elsewhere (Tom Freeman, 'John Bales' Book of Martyrs?: The Account of King John in Acts and Monuments', Reformation 3 (1998), 175-223) this section was very unlikely to have been written by Foxe, and that it was very probably an account of the reign, prepared by John Bale after his return to England in 1559, as part of a long-projected continuation of his Acts of the English Votaries, originally published in its first two parts in 1551, and which had ended with the reign of Richard I. We surmised that, when Bale realised that his final illness would prevent his completing the work, he sent the account of King John to Foxe, who readily incorporated it into the first book of the Acts and Monuments, itself evidently (the tell-tale signs are its irregular pagination and the awkward transition to the next book) a late addition to the work. This circumstantial reassignation of authorship is advanced on the basis of a detailed discussion of the sources used for the narrative, and the way in which they are handled. The account relies, directly or indirectly, on the following:-a) Roger of Howden's chronicleb) Roger of Wendover's Flores Historiarumc) Matthew Paris' Cronica Majorad) Matthew Paris' Historia Anglorume) The Barnwell Chroniclef) The Eulogium Historiarum, also quoted in William Caxton's The chronicles of England (London, 1482)g) Ranulph Higden's Polychroniconh) The chronicle sometimes known as the 'Annals of Winchester'The article, cited above, examines these borrowings, and the ways in which the sources were more available to Bale than to Foxe in 1563. It also demonstrates how the ways in which they were used are much more consistent with Bale's handling of historical sources than Foxe's. Whilst Foxe was capable of the heavily partisan and selective citation of his sources to construct his narrative, he was generally not disposed to inventive elaboration of them, such as occurs in this passage.
[Back to Top]One element of this account of King John's reign became the target for Foxe's critics after 1563. It concerned the final account of a monk poisoning the king. In 1565, the Catholic apologist Thomas Harding (in A Counterblast to M. Hornes vayne blast [Louvain, 1567], fols 312B-314A) attacked the credibility of Foxe's narrative by enumerating those sources which unambiguously attributed John's death to natural causes. Two years later, Thomas Stapleton questioned the credibility of the Eulogium Historiarum in the version edited and printed by Caxton. Foxe's response in the 1570 edition did not specifically refer to Stapleton's criticism, but responded indirectly in two ways: firstly, by the addition of another account of John's poisoning, taken from Walter of Guisborough's chronicle, in which the monks murder John with a poisoned dish of pears (see Freeman, 'John Bales' Book of Martyrs', p. 207; and p. 223). His second response was the late addition to the 1570 text of two texts, the first on the 'Primacy of the Popes' and the second entitled 'The Image of Antichrist'. Foxe's other changes in 1570 were minor (thus indicating that, even if he had not composed the narrative himself, he certainly was in accord with its views), and reflect the tensions and fears of catholic conspiracy prevalent in 1569-70. He inserted 'another chronicle' account of John's inconclusive conference with two papal legates in 1211 (taken from the Eulogium) and designed to emphasise that the Pope sought to humiliate the English king. He also expanded on a passage in 1563 in which Pope Innocent III announced that any soldiers invading England were entitled to war the livery of Crusaders. The revised passage read that the Pope promised the French king and his soldiers remission of sins if they invaded England. Foxe probably had the rebellion of the Northern Earls of 1569 in mind when he wrote that John submitted to the Pope from fear of foreign invasion and 'his own people, especially his lords and barons being rebelliouslye incited against him, as by the popes curses and interdictions against such as tooke hys part' (1570, p. 331). The passage did not change in the editions following 1570.
[Back to Top]Mark Greengrass
University of Sheffield
MarginaliaK. Iohn.AFter the death of Kyng Richard called Coeur de Lyon, reigned his brother Ihon Earle of Morton. Afterward the Archbyshop put the crowne on his head, and sware him to defend the church, and to maintaine the same and her good lawes, and to destroy the euill. And except he thought not in his mynde to do this, the archb. charged him, not to presume to take on him this dignitie. And on S. Iohn Baptistes day next following, Kyng Ihon say
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