John Foxe 1516/1517 – 18 April 1587, an English historian and martyrologist, was the author of Actes and Monuments otherwise Foxe's Book of Martyrs, telling of Christian martyrs throughout Western history, but particularly a sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the 14th century and in the reign of Mary I. The book was widely owned and read by English Puritans and helped to mould British theory on the Catholic Church for several centuries.
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 factor in matchmaking. Foxe was so living known as a man of prayer that Francis Drake credited his victory at Cadiz in factor 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 remain 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 to 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, sent 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".