Note 45 — PREFACE

This reference to the well known "Actes and Monumentes" of John Foxe, the English Martyrologist, has more than once been pointed out as an anachronism. Thus, Spottiswood asserts, that Foxe's work "came not to light [till] some ten or twelve years after Mr. Knox his death," (p. 267,) and concludes, that "the History given forth in his name was not of his inditing." But Knox's phrase, "laitlie sett furth," is quite applicable to the first publication of Foxe's Martyrology; as there is no reason to doubt that Knox wrote this portion of his History in 1566, and it is certain that Foxe's "Actes and Monumentes," &c., printed at London by John Daye, was completed in the beginning of 1564, in large folio. In this edition there is an account of Patrick Hamilton, which (with some other notices) will be given verbatim in the Appendix, No. III. Foxe's Martyrology was again printed by Daye, "newly recognized by the author," in 1570, 2 vols. folio; a third time in 1576; and a fourth (being probably the earliest edition of which Spottiswood had any knowledge) in 1583.