Personality
Foxe was so bookish that he ruined his health by his persistent study. Yet, he had "a genius for friendship," served as a spiritual counselor, and was a man of private charity. He even took part in matchmaking. Foxe was so well known as a man of prayer that Francis Drake credited his victory at Cadiz in part to Foxe's praying. Furthermore, Foxe's extreme unworldliness caused others to claim that he had prophetic powers and could heal the sick.
Certainly Foxe had a hatred of cruelty in advance of his age. When a number of Flemish Anabaptists were taken by Elizabeth's government in 1572 and sentenced to be burnt, Foxe first wrote letters to the Queen and her council asking for their lives and then wrote the prisoners themselves (having his Latin draft translated into Flemish) pleading with them to abandon what he considered their theological errors. Foxe even visited the Anabaptists in prison. (The attempted intercession was in vain; two were burnt at Smithfield "in great horror with roaring and crying.")
John Day's son Richard, who knew Foxe well, described him in 1607 as an "excellent man...exceeding laborious in his pen...his learning inferior to none of his age and time; for his integrity of life a bright light to as many as knew him, beheld him, and lived with him." Foxe's funeral was accompanied "by crowds of mourners."
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