RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Fowler Fox
outwardly to man." Ashe grew up, his relations "thought to have made him a priest"; but he was put as an apprentice to a man who was a shoemaker and grazier. In his nineteenth year the conduct of two companions, who were professors of religion, grieved him because they joined in drinking healths, and he heard an inward voice from the Lord, " Thou seest how young people go together into vanity, and old people into the earth; and thou must forsake all, both young and old, and keep out of all, and be as a stranger unto all." Then began a life of solitary wandering in mental temptations and troubles, in which he "went to many a priest to look for comfort, but found no comfort from them." At one time, as he was walking in a field, " the Lord opened unto " him " that being bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not enough to fit and qualify men to be ministers of Christ," but that a spiritual qualification was necessary. Not seeing this requisite in the priest of his parish, he " would get into the orchards and fields " by himself with his Bible. Regarding the priests less, he looked more after the dissenters, among whom he found " some tenderness," but no one that could speak to his need. " And when all my hopes in them," he says, " and in all men, were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh! then, I heard a voice which said, ' There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.' "
In 1648 he began to exercise his ministry publicly in market-places, in the fields, in appointed meetings of various kinds, sometimes in the " steeple-houses," after the priests had got through. His preaching was powerful; and His many joined him in professing the Ministry, same faith in the spirituality of true The So- religion. In a few years the Society ciety of of Friends had formed itself sponta- Friends. neously under the preaching of Fox and his companions (see Friends, Society of, I., § 1). Fox afterward showed great powers as a religious legislator, in the admirable organization which he gave to the new society. He seems, however, to have had no desire to found a sect, but only to proclaim the pure and genuine principles of Christianity in their original simplicity. He was often arrested and imprisoned for violating the laws forbidding unauthorized worship, for refusal to take an oath, and for wearing his hat in court. He was imprisoned at Derby in 1650, Carlisle in 1653, London in 1654, Launceston in 1656, Lancaster in 1660 and 1663, Scarborough in 1666, and Worcester in 1674, in noisome dungeons, and with much attendant cruelty. In prison his pen was active, and hardly less potent than his voice.
In 1669 Fox married Margaret Fell of Swarthmoor Hall, a lady of high social position, and one of his early converts. In 1671 he went to Barbados and the English settlements in America, where he remained two years. In 1677 and 1684 he visited the Friends in Holland, and organized their meetings for discipline.
Fox is described by Thomas Ellwood, the friend of Milton, as " graceful in countenance, manly in
personage, grave in gesture, courteous in conversation." Penn says he was " civil beyond all forms of breeding." We are told that he was " plain and powerful in preaching, fervent in prayer," " a discerner of other men's spirits, and very much master of his own," skilful to " speak a word in due season to the conditions and capacities of most, especially to them that were weary, and wanted soul's rest; " " valiant in asserting the truth, bold in defending it, patient in suffering for it, immovable as a rock." Isaac Sharpless.
Bibliography: The original MS. of Fox's Journal is in Devonshire House, Bishopsgate W., London; it was published 2 vols., London, 1694-98, and contains the Epistles, Letters and Testimonials, bicentenary edition, 1891; selections from it, edited by R. M. Jones with title George Fox, an Autobiography, were published, Philadelphia, 1903. Lives have been written by S. M. Janney, Philadelphia, 1852; J. S. Watson, London, 1860; T. Hodgkin, ib. 1898. Consult also: Maria Webb, The Fells of Swarthmoor Hall and their Friends, London, 1865; W. Tallack, George Fox, the Friends, and Early Baptists, London, 1868; B. Rhodes, Three Apostles of Quakerism, ib. 1884; Jane Budge, Glimpses of Fox and his Friends, ib. 1893; E. E. Taylor, Cameos from the Life of George Fox, ib., 1908; DNB, xx. 117-122, and, in general, the literature under Friends, Society of.
FOX (FOXE), JOHN: Author of the Book of Martyrs; b. in Boston (100 m. n. of London), Lincolnshire, 1516; d. in London Apr. 15, 1587. He studied at Oxford, and became fellow of Magdalen College, where he applied himself to church history. Dean Nowell, Hugh Latimer, and William Tyndale were among his intimate friends and correspondents. For his Protestant sentiments he seems to have been expelled from his college. He became tutor in Sir Thomas Lucy's family, and then to the children of the Earl of Surrey for five years. During this period he issued several tracts and a Sermon of John Oecolampadius to Yong Men and Maydens (London, 1550?). After the accession of Mary he was obliged to seek refuge from persecution on the Continent. He met Edmund Grindal at Strasburg and saw through the press in that city a volume of 212 pages on the persecution of Reformers from Wyclif to 1500, entitled Commentarii rerum in ecclesia gestarum maximarumque per totam Europam persecutionum a Vuicleui temporibus ad hanc usque oetatem descriptio (1554). He went to Frankfort and sought to be a mediator in the differences between Dr. Cox and John Knox and removed from there, on Knox's departure, to Basel. Poverty forced him to apply himself to the printer's trade. Encouraged by Grindal {Remains, ed. W Nicholson for the Parker Society, Cambridge, 1843, pp. 223 sqq.) he labored diligently on his great work on the martyrs, which appeared in Latin at Basel, 1559, and was dedicated to his former pupil, now the duke of Norfolk. Returning to England he spent much time under the roof of the duke, and attended him to the scaffold, when at the age of thirty-six he was executed for conspiring with Mary Queen of Scots. He received a prebend in Salisbury Cathedral but remained poor all his life, although an annuity from the duke of Norfolk of £20 kept him from want. Called by Archbishop Parker to subscribe to the canons, he refused, and, holding up a Greek Testa-
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