tests that he never had greater will to serve the king's father than the king himself, especially since Wolsey's great charge, ‘perceiving better, straighter, and speedier ways of justice, and more diligence and labour for the king's right, duties, and profits to be in you than ever I see in times past in any other, and that I myself had more ease in attendance upon you in the said matters than ever I had before.’ Had he not good impediment and the king's license to be occupied in his cure, to make satisfaction for twenty-eight years' negligence, he would be very blameable and unkind not to accept the invitation to court, considering Wolsey's goodness to him in times past. In a letter to Wolsey, written at a later date, 30 April 1522, Foxe speaks with still greater compunction of his former neglect of his spiritual duties, and with a still more fixed determination to take no further part in the affairs of state, to which Wolsey was endeavouring to recall his attention: ‘Truly, my singular good lord, since the king's grace licensed me to remain in my church and thereabouts upon my cure, wherein I have been almost by the space of thirty years so negligent, that of four several cathedral churches that I have successively had, there be two, scilicet, “Excestre and Wellys,” that I never see; and “innumerable sawles whereof I never see the bodyes;” and specially since by his licence I left the keeping of his privy seal, and most specially since my last departing from your good lordship and the council, I have determined, and, betwixt God and me, utterly renounced the meddling with worldly matters; specially concerning the war [with France] or anything to it appertaining (whereof for the many intolerable enormities that I have seen ensue by the said war in time past, I have no little remorse in my conscience), thinking that if I did continual penance for it all the days of my life, though I shall live twenty years longer than I may do, I could not yet make sufficient recompence therefor.’ The tone of this letter, though the bishop's determination is firm, is throughout most friendly to Wolsey. Foxe's aversion to the French war had, it is plain from the passage quoted, as well as from subsequent parts of the letter, something to do with his disinclination to quit his pastoral charge, even for ever so brief a period, for the secular business of the court. In fact, of the two parties into which the council and the country were divided, the French and the German party, Foxe, as comes out plainly in the despatches of Giustinian, favoured the former.
The closing years of Foxe's life were spent in the quiet discharge of his episcopal duties, in devotional exercises, and the acts of liberality and munificence through which his memory now mainly survives. He was not, however, without trouble in his diocese. Writing to Wolsey, 2 Jan. 1520–1, he expresses satisfaction at Wolsey's proposed reformation of the clergy, the day of which he had desired to see, as Simeon desired to see the Messiah. As for himself, though, within his own small jurisdiction, he had given nearly all his study to this work for nearly three years, yet, whenever he had to correct and punish, he found the clergy, and particularly (what he did not at first suspect) the monks, so depraved, so licentious and corrupt, that he despaired of any proper reformation till the work was undertaken on a more general scale, and with a stronger arm. Once more we hear of him in a public capacity in 1523. The enormous subsidy of that year was energetically opposed in convocation, according to Polydore Vergil, by Foxe and Fisher, though of course without success. The charge on Foxe himself amounted to 2,000l., on the Archbishop of Canterbury to 1,000l., on Wolsey to 4,000l. The largeness of the revenues of the great sees at this time is strikingly illustrated by the fact that Foxe's newly founded college of Corpus was rated only at 133l. 6s. 8d., and the two richest colleges in Oxford, Magdalen and New Colleges, only at 333l. 6s. 8d. each.
The story that shortly before his death Wolsey proposed to Foxe that he should retire from his bishopric on a pension, and that Foxe tartly replied that though he could no longer distinguish white from black, yet he could well discern the malice of an ungrateful man, and bade him attend closer to the king's business, leaving Winchester to the care of her bishop, rests solely on the authority of Archbishop Parker. It is inconsistent with what we know otherwise of Foxe's relations with Wolsey, and has an apocryphal flavour.
Foxe, who appears to have been totally blind for ten years before his death, died, probably at his castle of Wolvesey in Winchester, on 5 Oct. 1528. According to a document found in his coffin, from which this date is taken, he was buried on the very same day, the place of sepulture being the splendid Gothic chapel in Winchester Cathedral, which he had previously constructed. The ecclesiastical historian, Harpsfield, says that, being then a boy at Winchester School, he was present at the funeral. This devout and gentle prelate passed away at an opportune moment, when the troubles connected with the divorce were only in their initial stage. He was succeeded by Wolsey, who held the see of Winchester as perpetual Administrator.
The most permanent memorial of Foxe is
