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 justice Monson, pointing out the disproportion between the offence and the punishment, and deprecating the penalty of death in cases of heresy. He also appealed to one of the prisoners to acknowledge the errors of his opinion, with which he had no sympathy. A respite of a month was allowed, but both prisoners were burnt at the stake 22 July. In 1576 and 1583 the third and fourth editions of the ‘Actes’ were issued. On 1 April 1577 Foxe preached a Latin sermon at the baptism of a Jew, Nathaniel, in Allhallows Church, Lombard Street (cf. ‘Elizabethan England and the Jews,’ by the present writer, in New Shakspere Soc. Trans. 1888). The title of the original ran: ‘De Oliva Evangelica. Concio in baptismo Iudæi habita. Londini, primo mens. April.’ London, by Christopher Barker, 1577, dedicated to Sir Francis Walsingham. At the close is a prose ‘Appendicula de Christo Triumphante,’ dedicated to Sir Thomas Heneage. A translation by James Bell appeared in 1578, with the Jew's confession of faith. In 1580 the same translator issued a tract entitled ‘The Pope Confuted,’ which professed to be another translation from Foxe, although the original is not identified. Tanner assigns ‘A New Years Gift touching the deliverance of certain Christians from the Turkish gallies’ to 1579, and says it was published in London. Foxe completed Haddon's second reply to Osorius in his ‘Contra Hieron. Osorium … Responsio Apologetica,’ dedicated to Sebastian, king of Portugal (Latin version 1577, English translation 1581). In 1583 he contested Osorius's view of ‘Justification by Faith’ in a new treatise on the subject, ‘De Christo gratis iustificante. Contra Osorianam iustitiam, Lond., by Thomas Purfoot, impensis Geor. Byshop,’ 1583. Tanner mentions an English translation dated 1598. ‘Disputatio Ioannis Foxij Angli contra Iesuitas’ appeared in 1585 at Rochelle, in the third volume of ‘Doctrinæ Iesuiticæ Præcipua Capita.’ According to Tanner, Foxe also edited in the same year Bishop Pilkington's ‘Latin Commentary on Nehemiah.’

Foxe's health in 1586 was rapidly breaking. An attempt in June of that year on the part of Bishop Piers of Salisbury to deprive him of the lease of Shipton much annoyed him; but the bishop did not press his point when he learned that he might by forbearance ‘pleasure that good man Mr. Foxe.’ Foxe died after much suffering in April 1587, and was buried in St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate, where a monument, with an inscription by his son Samuel, is still extant. His final work, ‘Eicasmi seu Meditationes in Sacram Apocalypsin,’ was printed posthumously in 1587 by George Bishop, and dedicated by Foxe's son Samuel to Archbishop Whitgift. Foxe was charitable to the poor, although he never was well-to-do, and would seem to have been of a cheerful temperament, despite his fervent piety. A letter to him from Bishop Parkhurst shows that he was a lover and a judge of dogs. His wife, who possessed all the womanly virtues, died 22 April 1605. Two sons, Samuel and Simeon, are separately noticed. A daughter, born in Flanders in 1555, and the two children Rafe and Mary, baptised at Waltham Abbey early in 1566, seem to have completed his family.

Of Foxe's great work, the ‘Actes and Monuments,’ four editions were published in his lifetime, viz. in 1563, 1570, 1576, and 1583. Five later editions are dated respectively 1596, 1610, 1632, 1641, and 1684. All are in folio. The first edition was in one volume, the next four in two volumes, and the last four named in three. The fifth edition (1596) consisted of twelve hundred copies. The edition of 1641 includes for the first time the memoir of the author, the authenticity of which is much contested. All have woodcuts, probably by German artists, inserted in the printed page. The first eight editions are all rare; the first two excessively rare. No quite perfect copy of the 1563 edition is extant. Slightly imperfect copies are at the British Museum, the Bodleian, the Cambridge University Library, Magdalen and Christ Church, Oxford. In the Huth Library a good copy has been constructed out of two imperfect ones. Early in the seventeenth century the first edition had become scarce, and Archbishop Spotiswood, writing before 1639, denied its existence. The corrected edition of 1570, which convocation directed to be placed in all cathedral churches, is more frequently met with. Many Oxford colleges possess perfect copies, but as early as 1725 Hearne wrote that this edition also was excessively rare. The British Museum possesses a complete set of the nine early editions.

Foxe's ‘Actes’ is often met with in libraries attached to parish churches. This was not strictly in obedience to the order of convocation of 1571, which only mentioned cathedral churches; but many clergymen deemed it desirable to give the order a liberal interpretation, and to recommend the purchase of the book for their churches. According to the vestry minutes of St. Michael, Cornhill, it was agreed, 11 Jan. 1571–2, ‘that the booke of Martyrs of Mr. Foxe and the paraphrases of Erasmus shalbe bowght for the church and tyed with a chayne to the Egle bras.’ Foxe's volumes cost the parish 2l. 2s. 6d. At the church of St. John the Baptist, Glas-