English School, circa 1580

Born in Boston, Lincolnshire, Foxe's fame rests upon his famous Book of Martyrs. He studied at Brasenose College, Oxford, before becoming a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He left the city in 1545 and became tutor to the Lucy family at Charlecote in Warwickshire. His more extreme Protestantism became more acceptable under the reign of Edward VI when Foxe entered the household of the King's kinswoman Mary, Duchess of Richmond. Here he tutored Thomas Howard, later 4th Duke of Norfolk. With the advent of Queen Mary he fled abroad first to Strasbourg and then Frankfurt (where he encountered John Knox), and thence to Basel. Here he commenced in 1552 his Book of Martyrs which was published in England a decade later, going through four editions in his lifetime. The book was highly influential, with its vivid and horrid accounts of the sufferings of protestants under the Catholic church, and shaped the English attitude to the Roman faith for generations.

There appear to be no ad vivum portraits of Foxe, although two late 16th or early 17th century images survive elsewhere, one in the National Portrait Gallery, London (inv. NPG 24)¹ and another, closer to this work, in the collection of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (inv. no. 27).²

¹ https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw02314/John-Foxe?LinkID=mp01661&role=sit&rNo=0

² https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/john-foxe-151615171587-martyrologist-193625