ABSTRACT
The Acts and Monuments by John Foxe were meant as a one-part memorial for those who had died at the stake during the previous reign of Mary I and one-part ecclesiastical history, telling how the Roman Church had become corrupted over time and how the Reformation was necessary as part of God’s plan for humanity. This study outlines the context within which the Acts and Monuments were written and prepares the case for why the pre-Lollard history in the first (1563) and second (1570) editions of the Acts and Monuments is worth studying. Historians have generally focused on the contemporary portions of the work, but almost one-third of its pages described medieval history. This suggests that the history portion of the work was important to Foxe and had a specific and useful purpose.
