This tabulation of French martyrs was introduced by Foxe into the 1570 edition of the A&M. It must have required a considerable investment of energy and research to prepare, and it was a substantial contribution to the work. Through it, and the accompanying tables of Spanish and German (Dutch) martyrs, Foxe clearly laid claim to situate the events in England within a European perspective - a claim that has frequently been ignored by later commentators. The table remained unchanged thereafter for the 1576 and 1583 editions - although a further edition of his key source, Jean Crespin, had appeared in 1582. By then, however, Crespin was dead, and the work was being updated by others, and the changes were principally to the post-1559 material which did not substantially alter what Foxe had derived from Crespin for this table. How did Foxe construct the table? In a prefatory essay to this edition, we outline the complex relationship between Foxe and the early editions of Crespin, and the extent of their mutual borrowings. It is clear, however, that Foxe could not read French. His knowledge of the French editions of Crespin - those of 1564 and 1570 - had, therefore, to be at second-hand. We must imagine that there was someone, perhaps in John Day's print-shop, whose familiarity with the French language enabled them to transcribe, or perhaps read, the text to Foxe. What is still more impressive is that, from a detailed comparison of the material in the table, it is clear that he used, at least for some of the entries, the 1570 edition of Crespin. This had appeared in the early months of that year, just in time for Foxe to include the entries that were unique to it (e.g. Thomas Moutarde, who had not appeared in earlier versions of Crespin) in this table. In addition, Foxe indicates the other sources which he utilised in its compilation. He seems generally to have used them as confirming the veracity of Crespin, his origo princes. Heinrich Pantaleon's Martyrum historia [...] pars secunda (Basel, 1563) was an important source in this respect. Foxe's Rerum in Ecclesia Gestarum […] pars prima (Basel, 1559) had been envisaged as a complementary and companion volume to Pantaleon's (as the particular titles indicate). By 1570, however, Foxe harboured an ambition to broaden his geographical and chronological scope. He ended the 1570 edition (Bk 12, p. 2296) holding out the prospect of a further volume in store, one which would both take the story forward from the accession of Elizabeth I, and also place it more evidently in an international context: 'Touchyng whose florishyng state [that of Queen Elizabeth I], her Princely reigne, and peaceable gouernement, with other things diuers and sondry incident to the same, and especially touchyng the great styres and alterations which haue happened in other foreine nations, and also partly among our selues here at home, for so much as the tractation hereof requireth an other Volume by it selfe, I shall therfore differre the reader to the next booke or Section insuyng: wherein (if the Lord so please to susteine me with leaue and lyfe) I may haue to discourse of all and singular such matters done and achiued in these our latter dayes and memory, more at large'. That no doubt explains why the table of the French martyrs ends with an otherwise inexplicable 'list' of miscellaneous martyrs that he has not included elsewhere in the table. They were those whom Crespin had included in his martyrology in 1564/1570, but whose deaths had falled after 17 November 1558. This was to be his marker for the putative, future volume. His other sources included Pierre de La Place, Commentaires de l'état de la religion et de la république sous les rois Henri & François seconds & Charles neuvième (1565) which he was able to access in 1570 in a Latin translation of the first part (Rerum in Gallia ob religionem gestarum libri tres, regibus Henrico secundo, ad illius quidam regni Finem, Francisco secundo, et Carolo nono) which had been published at Amsterdam. In one instance, discussed in the biographical list under 'Civaux', Foxe also referenced a manuscript source - 'ex scripto testimonio Senatus Genev[ensis]' for the martyrdom of one François Civaux. How Foxe had come by this reference, and why Crespin had not mentioned him in his martyrology, are discussed further in that biographical list.

Foxe's notion of the geographical boundaries of the kingdom of France was clearly somewhat defective. He includes some French-speaking martyrs from the Walloon provinces of Flanders (e.g. Thomas Calbergue; Nicolas Paul; Thomas Moutarde; Etienne de la Forge) and, at one point, acknowledged that this had been an error (1583, p. 912). More reasonably (since France had occupied most of Savoy in the years preceding the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559)) he also includes some martyrs from the Haute-Savoie (Jean Pointet, Geoffroi Varagle). In one instance, he includes a martyr originating from the principality of Béarn (François Danville). Foxe's standard of accuracy is generally high, even though his transliteration of the place-names, personal-names and institutional affiliations occasionally gave him problems and there are some signs of occasional misunderstandings. These are noted in the individual biographical entries for those mentioned in the table, as relevant.

Foxe's techniques for summarising the often lengthy and substantiated narratives of the French martyrs in Crespin are interesting. In comparison with Crespin (especially in the 1570 edition, which is the one which most single-mindedly focuses on the French reformation) he shows markedly less interest in what had become seen (through Genevan eyes) as its 'nicodemite' elements. Guillaume Briçonnet, Lefèvre d'Etaples, Marguerite de Navarre, Gérard Roussel hardly appear. Given its rationale, this is hardly surprising. More remarkable is that the role of the leading French magisterial reformers - Guillaume Farel and, more particularly, Jean Calvin - hardly signifies at all. In selecting his material from Crespin, Foxe removed all references to the letters exchanged between Calvin and the French martyrs. Instead, he focused most on the details of their interrogations and their execution narratives. Crespin's sources were undeniably patchy - at one point, Foxe passes an acidic comment on the lack of precision in the record-keeping - but, in some instances, he had managed to acquire first-person narratives of their interrogations, and in others he seems to have had access to transcripts of the process-verbaux, the court records. Foxe summarised this material selectively, often intelligently, albeit carefully eliding elements which might require elaborate glossing, or which departed from the collective and overall picture of the triumphant, suffering martyrdom that he sought to create through this table.

Mark Greengrass
University of Sheffield