The history and antiquities of Boston, and the villages of Skirbeck, Fishtoft, Freiston, Butterwick, Benington, Leverton, Leake, and Wrangle; comprising the hundred of Skirbeck, in the county of Lincoln. Including also a history of the East, West, and Wildmore fens, and copious notices of the Holland or Haut-Huntre fen ... sketches of the geology, natural history, botany, and agriculture of the district; a very extensive collection of archaisms and provincial words, local dialect, phrases, proverbs, omens, superstitions, etc. By Pishey Thompson. Illustrated with one hundred engravings.

JOHN FOX. 405
account of this celebrated man as our limits will allow, we shall take the
memoir furnished by Mr. TOWNSEND in the edition of the 6"Acts and Monuments," published in 1841, as the text of our narrative, drawing occasionally
upon other sources, and append as notes, Dr. Maitland's observations upon the
different controverted points, as well as other elucidations, furnished by friends,
and our own researches.
JoHN Fox was born at Boston, in Lincolnshire, in 1517, the year in which
LUTMER published his Theses against the Church of Rome.l His parents
were of respectable rank in the town of Boston; but it is remarkable that his
son, in the memoir ascribed to him, says nothing about them. He tells us,
indeed, that his father, in his youth, was very forward and diligent in his
learning; that, at an early age, he (the martyrologist) lost his father, and his
mother married a second husband, but does not give his name.e It appears
from the memoir that this second husband was a rigid Ronmanist, and educated
Fox in the strictest manner in the established doctrines of that Church. It
also appears that at the early age of sixteen (1533) he was sent to college.
All his biographers, following this memoir, state that he was first sent to
Brazennose College; but this fact cannot be traced in the history of that college,
nor is there any record of his admission. WooD,3 however, among the Bachelors of Divinity, 1538, has c "May 17th, John Fox, of Brazennose College; he
was afterwards of St. Mary Magdalen, and the noted martyrologist."' This
appears to decide the question. At this college (Brazennose) he had for his
chamber-fellow Alexander Nowell, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's, then aged
twenty-two. Their tutor was John Hawarden, or Harding, to whom Fox
dedicated his "' Syllogisticon.""4 How long he remained at Brazennose, is not
recorded. WOOD says he- took his degree of B.D. in 1538, and M.A. at Magdalen College, June 6th, 1543, and was elected a Fellow of this latter college
in 1543.5
In consequence of the great contests occasioned by the Reformation, and his
conviction of the truth of the reformed doctrines, after a long and arduous
mental struggle, he was tried for heresy in 1545; and is said, by his son, to
have been expelled; but it is more probable he resigned his fellowship to avoid
that result, since we do not find any account of his trial or expulsion in the
records of Magdalen College.6 It appears very probable that John Fox owed
the elements of his education to his mother's second husband, who, being a
Romanist in the strictest sense, upon Fox's secession from that faith, refused
him his right to his father's estate, and thus reduced him to beggary.
D1 r. MAITLAND assigns reasons for thinking Register of Magdalen College states he was elected
that Fox was born in 1516. It is remarkable, that Fellow of the college in 1539.
as the memoir was originally written, there was not 6 On the contrary, the College Register records
any date assigned as the year of his birth. Some his resignation, using the word " sponte."
corrector of the MS. has placed in the margin, Dr. MAITLAND considers the story of Fox's
"Anno salutis hutmanoe, 1517."-M. trial and expulsion to relate to a person named
2 There is reason to believe that the name of this JULIAN PALMER, who was a Fellow of Magdalen,
second husband was Richard Melton. Melton, how- and expelled for heresy about the time that Fox is
ever, is not a Boston name; it does not occur stated to have suffered that disgrace. " Certainly
either in the Corporation Records or the Parish many of the circumstances of the two cases were
Registers. identical, though the results were different. Palmer
3 Fasti, vol. i. col. 107, BLIss' edition. was expelled, Fox resigned." —B.
4 We have seen a statement that John Harding It is, however, very strange that the writer of
advised Fox's step-father to send him to Oxford. the memoir, whoever it was, should have confused
Fox, in his dedication of his Syllogisticon to the name of one party with the circumstances of
HIarding, calls him his "father;" but this was the other; and it almost passes belief that the son
only in allusion to his having been his friend in early could have been that writer, and thus ignorantly
youth, and probably instrumental in his being sent have stigmatised his father, when the truth might
to college.-B. have been so easily ascertained by a reference to the
5 There is some error in these latter dates. The College Register.