FOXE’S BOOK OF MARTYRS – A CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORIES OF FORREINE MARTYRS – ORIGINAL WOODCUT TITLE PAGE – LONDON – 1641

A large, highly decorative and historically significant original title page from A Continuation of the Histories of Forreine Martyrs: From the happy reigne of the most renowned Queene Elizabeth, to these Times, printed in London by Richard Hearn for the Company of Stationers in 1641. The work formed the separately titled and separately paginated continuation accompanying the great 1641 edition of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, universally associated with the later title Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Bibliographical records identify the continuation as Wing C5965, and surviving complete copies of the 1641 Foxe normally contain it as an appended section.

The title itself provides an unusually vivid summary of the historical and confessional concerns of seventeenth-century Protestant England. Beginning with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, it announces accounts of the massacres of Protestants in France in 1572, principally associated with the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and its aftermath; the celebrated deliverance of England from the Spanish Armada in 1588; the Gunpowder Plot of 1605; and the persecution of Protestants in the Valtellina in 1621. The publication therefore extends the tradition of Foxe’s great martyrology beyond the period treated by Foxe himself, incorporating later Protestant suffering and providential deliverance into the same historical narrative. A scholarly discussion of the work confirms that the 1641 Continuation was the reprint of a supplement already issued in 1632 and retained its independent title page and pagination within the larger Foxe compilation.

The date 1641 gives the title page particular historical resonance. It was printed at a moment of intense political and religious tension in England immediately before the outbreak of the Civil War. The language of Protestant persecution, Catholic conspiracy, foreign invasion and miraculous national deliverance would therefore have possessed an immediacy for contemporary readers quite different from that of a detached historical chronicle. Its references to the Armada and Gunpowder Plot place the sheet within a long-established culture of Protestant collective memory in which England’s survival was interpreted through a strongly providential framework.

Visually, the title is surrounded by an exceptionally elaborate woodcut architectural and vegetal border. Two monumental uprights rise from richly ornamented pedestals and flaming vessels, their shafts transformed into luxuriant spirals of foliage, fruit, fantastic creatures and small figures. The lower centre is occupied by a large Renaissance-style ornamental vase, while the upper register develops into an intricate emblematic architectural structure with towers, flames, scrollwork and heraldic or symbolic devices. The resulting composition is considerably more ambitious than a conventional typographical title page and gives the sheet the visual character of a monumental entrance or triumphal portal framing the historical text.

The title reads in full, with contemporary spelling, A Continuation of the Histories of Forreine Martyrs: From the happy reigne of the most renowned Queene Elizabeth, to these Times. With sundry Relations of those bloudy Massacres executed upon the Protestants in the Cities of France, in the yeare 1572. Whereunto are annexed the two famous Deliverances of our English Nation: the one from the Spanish Invasion in 88. The other from the Gunpowder Treason, in the yeare 1605. Together with the Barbarous cruelties exercised upon the Professors of the Gospell in the Valtoline, 1621, followed by the imprint London, Printed by Ric. Hearn, for the Company of Stationers, Anno Dom. 1641.

The 1641 Foxe was the eighth and final edition of the work printed in black letter, according to specialist bibliographical cataloguing. A currently offered complete example is described as expanded from previous editions and supplied with a renewed series of woodcut illustrations; the Continuation is normally bound with it as an integral supplementary section.

The importance of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments within English religious and cultural history is difficult to overstate. First published in English in 1563, it became one of the most influential Protestant books of early modern England. The later continuations demonstrate how Foxe’s interpretative framework survived beyond the author’s death in 1587 and was repeatedly adapted to encompass subsequent events. The present title page is therefore an original seventeenth-century witness to the continuing construction of English Protestant historical memory.

Condition

Good condition overall for an original title leaf dating from 1641. The sheet remains substantially complete and the extensive woodcut composition is strongly printed, with excellent survival of the fine architectural, foliate and figurative detail. There is notable roughness and loss along the former binding edge to the left, including several irregular indentations where the leaf was removed from the volume. General age-toning, light surface soiling and scattered spotting are present, together with some staining, particularly towards the lower margin, and several old creases including a diagonal crease towards the upper right. The principal printed border and central title remain complete and highly presentable. The verso shows offsetting/show-through from the recto, scattered staining and signs of former binding and handling. Please examine all photographs carefully, as they form an important part of the condition description.

Title: A Continuation of the Histories of Forreine Martyrs: From the happy reigne of the most renowned Queene Elizabeth, to these Times.

Associated Work: John Foxe, Acts and Monuments / Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

Printer: Richard Hearn.

Publisher: The Company of Stationers.

Place: London.

Date: 1641

Format: Original single title leaf with extensive woodcut border.

Sheet Size: 21.4 × 33.2 cm.

Language: English.

Technique: Letterpress within an elaborate woodcut architectural and ornamental border.

Subjects: Protestant martyrs; Queen Elizabeth I; St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and French Wars of Religion; Spanish Armada of 1588; Gunpowder Plot of 1605; persecution of Protestants in the Valtellina in 1621.

Bibliographical Reference: Wing C5965. The Continuation forms a separately titled and separately paginated supplement normally bound with the 1641 edition of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments.

Historical Importance

An original title page from a major seventeenth-century continuation of the Foxe martyrological tradition, bringing together some of the defining episodes of English and European Protestant historical memory. Printed in 1641, immediately before the English Civil War, the sheet is particularly evocative of the religious and political climate in which memories of Catholic persecution, the Armada and the Gunpowder Plot continued to shape English Protestant identity.

Authentication

Handled, inspected and researched in-house. An original seventeenth-century printed title leaf from the 1641 edition, not a later reproduction.

Scarcity

Complete examples of the 1641 Foxe with the Continuation survive institutionally and occasionally appear in the antiquarian market, but individual examples of this highly decorative title page are much less frequently encountered separately. Current complete-volume offerings range into the low thousands of pounds, while specialist descriptions specifically note the Continuation as a distinct separately titled component of the set. The absence of readily identifiable comparable loose title pages should not be interpreted as a definitive census, but the sheet is substantially less commonplace in commerce than ordinary text leaves from the same edition.

Handled, inspected and researched in-house. An original sixteenth-century printed leaf from the 1541 Antwerp edition, not a later reproduction.

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