ABSTRACT
The Victorian age, which occupied most of the nineteenth century, has been shown by Walter Houghton to have been perceived, ali else, as 'an age of transition'. When considering the four editions of the Acts and Monuments produced during a 40-year interval in the nineteenth century, one might well wonder why there had not been a complete edition since 1684. Resolution of the issue was not easy for G. Townsend, but in the end he felt himself obligated to tackle the expanded version. The major enterprise of making John Foxe available in a contemporary edition was coupled with the task of justifying his ways to the early Victorian ecclesiastical community - at the very time when the English Reformation began to excite interest all over again. 'The Oxford tract-writers' will admit only those on a very select list to the ranks of the 'one church': 'the Papal, Greek, Anglican, and other episcopal communions'.
