Obviously, the most valuable parts of Foxe's Acts and Monuments are the accounts which he gives of the disciplinary measures by means of which the ecclesiastical authorities of England endeavored to make good their claim to supreme jurisdiction over the faith and morals of their subjects, particularly during the reign of Henry VIII and that of Mary. Although Foxe repeatedly stated that he “professed no such title to write of martyrs,” it was as a history of ecclesiastical persecution primarily, that the work was hailed with delight by all factions of English Protestants. The public lost no time dubbing it “Foxe's Book of Martyrs,” the title by which it has ever since been popularly known. Those who had safely lived through the dreadful tempora Mariana, either as exiles abroad or as heretics at home, eagerly scanned its pages for some mention of relatives or acquaintances who had perished in the flames rekindled by Mary and her councillors. Many of its readers, not looking for it, were no doubt gratified as well as surprised to find their own names woven into the story of religious and patriotic heroism, a factor which contributed not a little to the enormous popularity of the work. It was not, then, for the history of the Waldenses or the Turks or the Husites that people turned to the Acts and Monuments, at least not primarily; their chief interest lay in Foxe's history of the English martyrs —Lollard, Henrician, and Marian.
Joan la Pucelle and the Inverted Saints Play in 1 Henry VI
