(ch. vi. § 50) had printed at Ipswich, in 1548, and presented to Edward VI., the first edition of his (Latin) “Summary of the Illustrious Writers of Great Britain." In 1552, Edward VI. made him Bishop of Ossory; and he afterwards painted his difficulties with a flock of antagonist faith to his own, in a book called The Vocation of John Bale to the Bishopric of Ossory in Ireland; his Persecutions in the same, and his Final Deliverance. After the accession of Mary, Bale escaped to Switzerland, but he came to England upon the accession of Elizabeth, obtained in 1560 a prebend in Canterbury Cathedral, and died in 1563. The completed edition of John Bale's account of English Writers-Scriptorum Illustrium Majoris Brytanniæ Catalogus-expanded from five centuries to fourteen, was published in folio by Oporinus, at Basle, in 1557 and 1559. It is our first literary history, inaccurate and warped by the controversial heat of the time, but important as an aid to study of our early literature.

13. John Fox (ch. vi. § 60) had in the reign of Mary worked as corrector of the press for Oporinus, of Basle, to whom he introduced himself by presentation of the first sketch of his history of the Church, warped also by the heat of conflict, and first suggested to him by Lady Jane Grey. At this he proceeded to work, writing it then in Latin. The first sketch was published in octavo in 1554. John Aylmer (§ 2), and more particularly Edmund Grindal, also exiles, aided Fox with information received out of England concerning the martyrs for their faith. At the accession of Elizabeth, Fox was in Basle with a wife and two children, poor, but with a more settled employment than he could afford immediately to leave. His friend Grindal went back to England, but Fox remained another year at Basle, and for a time suspended, as Grindal advised, the production of his enlarged history of troubles in the Church, because new matter in abundance would now surely come to light. This enlarged book appeared, in its first Latin form, in folio, from the press of Oporinus, in August, 1559, and containing some facts that were omitted in the translations. In the following October, John Fox had returned to London, where he was housed by Aldgate at Christchurch, the manor-place of his old pupil the Duke of Norfolk. From Aldgate he went every Monday to the printingoffice of John Day, whence early in 1563 appeared in folio the first edition of his work in English as Acts and Monuments of these latter and perillous Dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described the great Persecutions

TO A.D. 1563.]

JOHN FOX.

341

and horrible Troubles that have been wrought and practised by the Romishe Prelates, especiallye in this Realme of England and Scotlande, from the Yeare of our Lorde a Thousande unto the Tyme now present. Gathered and collected according to the true Copies and Wrytinges certificatorie, as wel of the Parties themselves that suffered, as also out of the Bishops' Registers which were the doers thereof, by John Foxe. To a right student the value of such a book is rather increased than lessened by the inevitable bias of a writer who recorded incidents that had for him a deep, real, present interest, and who had his own part in the passion of the controversy he describes. It vividly represents one aspect of the strong life of the sixteenth century. The book, dedicated to the queen, was ordered to be set up in parish churches for the use of all the people, except in times of Divine service. From the Duke of Norfolk's, Fox went to live near John Day, for whom he worked as author, translator, and editor. John Day, a Suffolk man, had been busy in Edward VI.'s time as a printer of Bibles. Under Mary he was at one time a prisoner, at one time an exile. Under Elizabeth he had a printing-office, growing in size, against the city wall by Aldersgate, and shops for the sale of his books in several parts of London. Letters to Fox are extant addressed to him as "dwelling with Master Day, the printer, at Aldersgate;" and also to "Master John Fox, at his house in Grubbe Street." In Grub Street, then, we have, during the early years of Elizabeth, John Fox, the martyrologist, housed in a quality not unlike that of the bookseller's hack, though he and his bookseller and printer were actually fellow-workers with a common aim, and that the noblest, whereby they were to earn bread in service of their country. Captain Pen had already taken precedence of Captain Sword. Fox held a prebend at Salisbury, although he was opposed to the compromise with old forms in the ecclesiastical system of the Church, and refused to subscribe to anything but the Greek Testament. He preached at Paul's Cross and elsewhere; but his most important work was that done with John Day.

John Day, the printer, was the only man of his calling who had types in the First English (or Anglo-Saxon) characters. One incident of the English Reformation was a revived study of First English, because that was a way to evidence of the antiquity of the Reformed Church. Sermons and writings of its first clergy would show that the Church of the Reformation was in agreement with the Church of England in its earliest state,

before corruption had crept in. Fox, therefore, studied First English, and one use made by him of Day's types was to produce, in 1571, dedicated to the queen, an edition of the Saxon Gospels. John Fox died in 1587.

14. John Jewel, born in Devonshire in 1522, had been tutor and preacher in his University of Oxford, and rector of Sunningwell, near Oxford. He bent under persecution after the accession of Mary, and subscribed to the Church of Rome; but was distrusted and went abroad. He returned to England at the accession of Elizabeth, and stood forward as one of the sixteen Protestants appointed to dispute before the queen with sixteen Catholics. He was in 1559 one of the commissioners for the extirpation of Catholicism in the West of England, and a few months later was made Bishop of Salisbury. His Latin Apology for the English Church-Apologia Ecclesiæ Anglicane -published in 1562, was accepted as a representative book of its time, and was in the same year translated into English by Lady Anna, the wife of Sir Nicholas Bacon. John Jewel died in 1571, at the age of fifty, having broken his health by reducing hours of sleep to the interval between midnight and four in the morning.

15. The chief promoter of Fox's edition of the Saxon Gospels was Archbishop Parker. Matthew Parker, born in 1504, at Norwich, was the son of a merchant. At the age of twelve he lost his father, but he was educated carefully by his mother, who sent him to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. There he obtained a fellowship in 1527. In 1533 he preached his first sermon before the University, and obtained the good-will of Cranmer, who brought him to court. Anne Boleyn made him her chaplain, and tutor to her child Elizabeth. In 1537 he was made chaplain to Henry VIII., and then D.D. In 1541 he got a prebend in Ely, and soon afterwards a rectory in Essex. In 1544 he was Master of Corpus Christi College, and he held that office for nine years. In 1545 he was made ViceChancellor of the University, and rector of Landbeach, in Cambridgeshire. At the accession of Edward VI. Matthew Parker married. In 1552, King Edward gave him a prebend at Lincoln, having already made him his chaplain. During his exile, in the reign of Mary, Parker translated the Psalms into English verse, for comfort to himself like that of David, for whom in a time of trouble, as Parker says in his metrical preface:

TO A.D. 1563.] JEWEL.

PARKER. THE GENEVA BIBLE. 343

"With golden stringes such harmonie

His harpe so sweete did wrest,

That he reliev'd his phrenesie
When wicked sprites possest."

This version of the Psalter, finished in 1557, was printed about 1560 by John Day. Parker published also, "against a civilian naming himself Thomas Martin, Doctor of the Civil Laws, going about to disprove the said marriages lawful," A Defence of Priestes Marriages, written by a learned man who died in the reign of Philip and Mary; with addition of his own "History of Priests' Marriages from the Conquest to Edward VI.'s Reign," which contains several quotations from First English. Upon her accession, Queen Elizabeth entrusted to Matthew Parker the revision of Edward VI.'s Service Book, and made him Archbishop of Canterbury in the place of Reginald Pole (ch vi. § 43), whose religious zeal had been in accord with the endeavours to suppress Protestant heresies, who had been made archbishop on the day after the burning of Cranmer, and who died a day after Queen Mary. For some time Matthew Parker objected to the appointment of himself, and it was not completed until 1559. He was zealous in the conflict of his time, learned in Church antiquities, and firm in support of the ecclesiastical system in the English Church.

There were produced early in the reign of Elizabeth two English versions of the Bible, which remained during the rest of her life commonly in use. These were the Geneva Bible, which appeared in 1560, and the Bishops' Bible, which appeared in 1568. The Geneva Bible was produced by the English congregation at Geneva during the reign of Mary, chiefly at the cost of John Bodley, the father of Sir Thomas Bodley. In 1557 the New Testament, translated by William Whittingham, Calvin's brother-in-law, was first published. It was translated from the Greek text as published by Erasmus, and revised from manuscripts collected by Genevan scholars. Calvin prefixed to it an Epistle declaring that Christ is the End of the Law." Whittingham, then, with the aid of fellow.. exiles, Gilby, Sampson, and others, turned to the Hebrew text, and instead of coming to England after the death of Mary, these labourers remained at Geneva to complete their work. Hebrew scholarship had advanced, and the Geneva Bible, completed in 1560, four years before the birth of Shakespeare, was as faithful as its translators could make it. Various

readings were given in the margin, and there were notes on points not only of history and geography but also of doctrine, which distinctly bound this version to the religious school of Calvin. In the Geneva Bible appeared, for the first time, as a plan to secure facility of reference, the now familiar division of the text into verses. This was the household Bible of those whom we may call-using the phrase in a broad sense- -the Elizabethan Puritans. In the dedication of it to Queen Elizabeth, the zeal of the Genevan Reformers was not less harsh than that from which they had suffered themselves in the reign of Mary. Elizabeth was reminded how the noble Josias "put to death the false prophets and sorcerers, to perform the words of the law of God. Yea, and in the days of King Asa, it was enacted that whosoever would not seek the Lord God of Israel should be slain, whether he were small or great, man or woman."

The zeal of Elizabeth was not so fierce. Her supremacy had been assured in civil and ecclesiastical matters, and uniformity in religion had been established by law. All persons in the Church, all graduates in the Universities, and all persons holding office of the crown, were required to take the oath of supremacy. A clergyman who did not use The Book of Common Prayer, or who spoke against it, was fined for the first offence a year's value of his living, and was liable also to six months' imprisonment. For the second offence his living was forfeited; and a third offence subjected him to imprisonment for life. The book had been prepared from a comparison of the first and second Service Books of Edward. Its introduction had been opposed, but when introduced there were, of 9,400 clergymen then in England, only 189 who became Nonconformists, and gave up their livings. Among the laity depreciation of the Book of Common Prayer was also liable to heavy punishment; and there was a fine of a shilling upon all persons who did not attend their parish church or some recognised place of worship on Sunday unless reasonable cause for absence could be shown. There was established also a High Court of Commissioners appointed under the Great Seal of England, to determine upon questions of " error, heresy, or schism." Roman Catholics were thus liable to punishment if they disparaged the services of the Reformed Church, and to fine if they stayed away from them; while the Puritans who objected to the retained forms of Catholicism in the English