Butler was charged with saying that nobody undergoes any punishmentfor sin after death (Lollards of Coventry, 1486-1522, ed. Shannon Mcsheffrey andNorman Tanner, Camden series, 23 [2003], p. 70). Foxe has altered this to a statement that no faithful man should be punished for sin after death.

Margery Goyte was prosecuted two years after the previous eight Coventry Lollards and there is no evidence that she had any connection with them. She was also from Ashburne, Derbyshire, which is some distance from the city ofCoventry. The account of Goyte, however, is also from the register of Bishop Hales of Coventry. (Lichfield record Office, Register Hales, fos. 168v-169v; printed in Lollards of Coventry, 1486-1522, ed. Shannon McSheffrey and Norman P. Tanner, Camden Society, Fifth series, 23 [2003], pp. 87-94).

Foxe omits two articles charged against Goyte. The first charged thatshe denied the virginity of the Virgin Mary and claimed that Christ was conceived ofJoseph. The second omitted article charged that she maintained that a child conceivedof Christian parents did not require the sacrament of baptism (Lollards of Caventry,1486-1522, ed. Shannon McSheffrey and Norman P. Tanner, Camden Society, Fifthseries, 23 [2003], p. 91).

Foxe is using the example of the Coventry Lollards to demonstrate that'true' Christianity existed before Luther and that the Protestants did not invent their doctrines. This apologetic requirement explains why Foxe purged his accounts of theCoventry Lollards of articles attributed to them that he regarded as unorthodox . This lengthy disgression, tying the prosperity of monarchs andtheir reigns to their resistance to 'papistry', is actually an attempt to goad Elizabeth and her councillors into further reforming the English Church.

Although Foxe does not openly admit it, the following brief biographyof Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the celebrated Italian Neo-Platonist and humanist, is a response to an attack by Nicholas Harpsfield. In the first edition of the A&M, Foxe had claimed that Pico della Mirandola, Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus had preparedthe way for Luther (1563, p. 402). Harpsfield responded indignantly, insisting thatPico was completely orthodox. Drawing heavily on Thomas More's translation ofGianfrancisco Pico della Mirandola's biography of his uncle, Harpsfield pointed out that the elder Pico della Mirandola flagellated himself in honour of Christ's passion and that he wished to become a friar. He dismissed passages where Pico della Mirandola denied transubstantiation as academic exercises written when the phlosopher was still an impetuous youth (Nicholas Harpsfield, Dialogi sex [1566], pp. 910-14). Foxe replies by drawing on elements in the younger Pico's biography that support his own case. The elder Pico was, in fact, a brilliant, but not sympatheticthinker, and both Harpsfield and Foxe could find aspects of his thought and writings to appropriate.

This is somewhat distorted. It is true that Innocent VIII ordered Pico della Mirandola's arrest for heresy, but Alexander VI absolved him.

The pre-Conquest laws excerpted in this in this section are translated from William Lambarde's Archaionomia. Lambarde's versions of these laws are based on translations made by Laurence Nowell, the antiquary. Nowell used an early twelfth-century translation of these lawcodes into Latin, the Quadripartitus. Nowell translated the Quadripartitus back into Anglo-Saxon, as he understood it. Lambarde gathered Nowell's manuscript translation together and printed them as the Archiaonomia. (See Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfredto the Twelfth Century [Oxford, 1999], pp. 6-7 and 260-2. For a more detailed analysis see Patrick Wormald, 'The Lambarde Problem: Eighty Years On' in Alfredthe Great: Studies in Honour of Janet Bately, ed. Jane Roberts, Janet Nelson and Malcolm Godden (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 237-75. Foxe cited these laws in anattempt to demonstrate that 'English' kings had held jurisdiction over the EnglishChurch before both were weakened and corrupted by the Papacy.Thus, while the Anglo-Saxon laws deal with multifarious criminal and economic matters, Foxe only prints those laws pertaining to the Church. Although Foxeabridges some of these laws, his translations of them are accurate.

Thomas S. Freeman
University of Sheffield