Foxe moved the short tract on the life and acts of Innocent III from the end of the section on King John in the 1563 edition to the beginning of the section on Henry III's early reign in the 1570 edition. The account is almost entirely extracted out of John Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Brytanniae …Catalogus (Basel, 1557), pp. 234-5 but also supplemented with evidence from Innocent III's papal decretails, commonly called Corpus Juris Canonici. There were various manuscript versions in existence making it difficult to know which version is used here.

From this summary Foxe indulges in anti-papal polemics from the thirteenth century as a framework for his rewriting of the Cathar heresy into agents of Christ's church. First Foxe attacked the increase of Monastic Orders as a sign that the Roman Church could not even agree from within itself. The text is largely lifted from John Bale's Catalogus pp. 234-5 and The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, ed. Harry Rothewell, Camden Society, 3rd Series, 89 (London, Camden Society, 1957), pp. 150-1. The list of 101 Orders is interesting. Martin Luther did not produce any such list despite Foxe's reference to him. The unidentified English book that Foxe refers to is also unknown. It is possible that Foxe was relying on an unprinted list compiled by John Bale.

Next follows the prophecy of the nun, Hildegard written down in her Scivias, Liber vitae meritorum and Liber divionorum operum, which represented a popular prophecy about the Antichrist from the early thirteenth century that had transmitted to the fourteenth-century primarily through Gebeno, Prior of Eberbach's Speculum Temporum Futurorum (1220). This text had attempted to link Hildegard's prophecy to the growing Cathar heresies. Hildegard was the abbess of Disibodenberg and Rupertsberg. In the 1563 edition Foxe took this account from Matthias Flacius, Catalogus testium veritatis (Strasbourg, 1556), pp. 650-655. However, in the 1570 edition Foxe has corrected the date of the prophecy from 1170 to 1146 and rearranged the prophecy itself. This suggests that he had either consulted Flacius' source, the Chronica Martini Poloni from Matthew Parker's collection (probably CCCC MS 372 or CCCC MS 59) or alternatively from a composite manuscript (CCCC MS 404) containing various prophesies including Hildegard.

Once this prophecy is outlined Foxe begins his discussion of the Cathars (Albigenses). Foxe publishes a letter by the Pope's legate concerning the Cathars setting up of a rival Pope. This account was first printed in the 1563 edition but from the 1570 edition onwards would be followed by a larger account of the Albigensian crusade (1209-1229) after further discussion of England's financial plight. The inclusion of the 1563 account without change even though Foxe had discovered more details reveals something of Foxe's working practise for the second edition. The account is extracted from either Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. Henry Richards Luard, Rolls Series (7 vols., London, 1872-1884), vol. 3, pp. 78-9 or Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, ed. Henry G. Hewlett, Rolls Series (3 vols., London, 1886-9) vol. 2, pp. 272-3.

This section is then completed by a full reproduction of a post-Wyclif Lollard tract attacking the practises and corruption of friars probably written in the early fifteenth century. Jack Upland was either mistaken as a work of Chaucer or for political and religious reasons attributed to the famous author of the fourteenth century to by-pass the ban on Lollard writings under the Six Articles. The popularity of Chaucer also made the association a powerful propaganda tool. In 1550 Robert Crawley had published a similar tract for reformist purposes entitled Piers Plowman, which had proved successful. See John N. King, 'Robert Crawley's editions of "Piers Plowman": A Tudor Apocalypse', Modern Philology, 73:4 (1976), pp. 342-352. If the reformists could show that Chaucer was a 'proto-Protestant' then this would help to popularise acceptance of the Elizabethan Church. P.L. Heyworth, 'The Earliest Black-letter editions of "Jack Upland"', The Huntingdon Library Quarterly, 30:4 (1967), pp. 307-314 has suggested that its original publication in the 1530s by John Gough and then again by John Day was to support the Henrician break from Rome and the subsequent dissolution of the monasteries. Jack Upland allowed Foxe to trace, through the association of Chaucer with Wyclif as 'faithful witnesses', the apostolic church at a time when the Antichrist was in full control of the church. The decision must also be, in part, related to John Day's earlier publication of the tract in the 1540s, which made its inclusion in the Acts and Monuments an easy addition to print. Its publication in the midst of Henry III's reign was to demonstrate the corruption of monkish orders, which Foxe had listed two pages earlier.

Matthew Phillpott
University of Sheffield