FOXE or FOX, RICHARD (1448?–1528), bishop of Winchester, lord privy seal to Henry VII and Henry VIII, and founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was born at Ropesley, near Grantham, Lincolnshire, about 1447 or 1448. In his examination touching the marriage of Henry VIII and Queen Catherine before Dr. Wolman on 5 and 6 April 1527 he speaks of himself as seventy-nine years old. The house in which he was born, part of which is still standing, seems to have been known as Pullock's Manor. His parents, Thomas and Helena Foxe, probably belonged to the class of respectable yeomen, for, though it became afterwards common to speak of his mean extraction, his earliest biographer, Thomas Greneway (president of Corpus Christi College 1562–8), describes him as ‘honesto apud suos loco natus.’ According to Wood, he was ‘trained up in grammar at Boston, till such time that he might prove capable of the university.’ According to another account, he received his school education at Winchester, but there is no early or documentary evidence of either statement. From Greneway onwards, his biographers agree that he was a student of Magdalen College, Oxford, though the careful antiquary, Fulman (1632–1688), adds ‘most probably;’ but the explicit statement of Greneway, writing in 1566, appears to derive striking confirmation from the large number of Magdalen men who were imported by Foxe into his new college of Corpus Christi. From Oxford he is said to have been driven by the plague to Cambridge, with which university he was subsequently connected as chancellor, and, at a still later period, as master of Pembroke. He did not linger in either seat of learning. ‘Long continuance in those places,’ says William Harrison in his ‘Description of England’ (2nd ed., 1586), ‘is either a sign of lack of friends or of learning, or of good and upright life, as Bishop Fox sometime noted, who thought it sacrilege for a man to tarry any longer at Oxford than he had a desire to profit.’ Impelled mainly, perhaps, by the love of learning (Greneway, and partly, perhaps, by the desire of adventure and advancement, Foxe repaired to Paris.
‘During his abode there,’ according to Fulman, Henry, earl of Richmond, was in Paris soliciting help from the French king, Charles VIII, ‘in his enterprise upon the English crown.’ He took Foxe, then a priest and doctor of the canon law, ‘into special favour and familiarity,’ and, upon his departure for Rouen, ‘made choice of Doctor Foxe to stay behind and pursue his negotiations in the French court, which he performed with such dexterity and success as gave great satisfaction to the earl.’
The first definite notice we have of Foxe is in a letter of Richard III, dated 22 Jan. 1484–5 (preserved in Stow, London and Westminster, sub. ‘Stepney,’ a reference due to Mr. Chisholm Batten), in which the king intervenes to prevent his institution to the vicarage of Stepney, on the ground that he is with the ‘great rebel, Henry ap Tuddor.’ The king's nominee, however, was never instituted, and Foxe (who is described in the register as L.B.) obtained possession of the living, 30 Oct. 1485.
After the victory of Bosworth Field (22 Aug. 1485) the Earl of Richmond, now Henry VII, constituted a council in which were included the two friends and fellow-fugitives, Morton, bishop of Ely, and Richard Foxe, ‘vigilant men and secret,’ says Bacon, ‘and such as kept watch with him almost upon all men else.’ On Foxe were conferred in rapid succession, besides various minor posts, the offices of principal secretary of state, lord privy seal, and bishop of Exeter. The temporalities of the see of Exeter were restored on 2 April 1487, and he at once appointed a suffragan bishop, evidently reserving himself for affairs of state. ‘In conferring orders,’ says Fulman, ‘and such like episcopal administrations, he made use of Thomas [Cornish, afterwards pro-
