Foxe’s Book of Martyr

Posted on June 14, 2022 by brucesbiblepage

https://www.biblestudytools.com/history/foxs-book-of-martyrs/

Edited by William Byron Forbush This is a book that will never die — one of the great English classics. . . . Reprinted here in its most complete form, it brings to life the days when “a noble army, men and boys, the matron and the maid,” “climbed the steep ascent of heaven, ‘mid peril, toil, and pain.” “After the Bible itself, no book so profoundly influenced early Protestant sentiment as the Book of Martyrs. Even in our time, it is still a living force. It is more than a record of persecution. It is an arsenal of controversy, a storehouse of romance, as well as a source of edification.”

Fox’s Book of Martyrs is in the public domain and may be freely used and distributed.

An Account of the Persecutions in Great Britain and Ireland, Prior to the Reign of Queen Mary I Part 1
Gildas, the most ancient British writer extant, who lived about the time that the Saxons left the island of Great Britain, has drawn a most shocking instance of the barbarity of those people..
The Saxons, on their arrival, being heathens like the Scots and Picts, destroyed the churches and murdered the clergy wherever they came: but they could not destroy Christianity, for those who would not submit to the Saxon yoke, went and resided beyond the Severn. Neither have we the names of those Christian sufferers transmitted to us, especially those of the clergy.
The most dreadful instance of barbarity under the Saxon government was the massacre of the monks of Bangor, A.D. 586. These monks were in all respects different from those men who bear the same name at present.
In the eighth century, the Danes, a roving crew of barbarians, landed in different parts of Britain, both in England and Scotland.
At first, they were repulsed, but in A.D. 857, a party of them landed somewhere near Southampton, and not only robbed the people but burned down the churches, and murdered the clergy.
In A.D. 868, these barbarians penetrated into the center of England, and took up their quarters at Nottingham; but the English, under their king, Ethelred, drove them from their posts, and obligated them to retire to Northumberland.
In 870, another body of these barbarians landed at Norfolk and engaged in battle with the English at Hertford. Victory was declared in favor of the pagans, who took Edmund, king of the East Angles, prisoner, and after treating him with a thousand indignities, transfixed his body with arrows, and then beheaded him.
In Fifeshire, in Scotland, they burned many of the churches, and among the rest that belonging to the Culdees, at St. Andrews. The piety of these men made them objects of abhorrence to the Danes, who, wherever they went singled out the Christian priests for destruction, of whom no less than two hundred were massacred in Scotland.
It was much the same in that part of Ireland now called Leinster, there the Danes murdered and burned the priests alive in their own churches; they carried destruction along with them wherever they went, sparing neither age nor sex, but the clergy was the most obnoxious to them, because they ridiculed their idolatry, and persuaded their people to have nothing to do with them.
In the reign of Edward III, the Church of England was extremely corrupted with errors and superstition; and the light of the Gospel of Christ was greatly eclipsed and darkened with human inventions, burthensome ceremonies, and gross idolatry.

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