"personages, who counted an interest in their blessed Redeemer more dear to them than life itself, and who sealed their faith with martyrdom, was the ultimate object of the venerable author, whose profitable and interesting work we have taken the liberty of abridging, for the purpose of placing in the hands of the Christian community in general, the substance of the same, at a price so moderate, as to obviate the objections of those whose circumstances(...)".
John Foxe, martyrologist, is remembered as the author of what is popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, an account of Christian martyrs throughout history but especially emphasizing the sufferings of English Protestants from the fourteenth century through the reign of Mary I.
Foxe's prospects, and those of the evangelical cause generally, improved after the death of Henry VIII in January 1547, the accession of Edward VI, and the formation of a Privy Council dominated by pro-reform Protestants.
Although both he and his contemporary readers were more credulous than most moderns, Foxe presented "lifelike and vivid pictures of the manners and feelings of the day, full of details that could never have been invented by a forger." Foxe's method of using his sources "proclaims the honest man, the sincere seeker after truth."
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