he proceeded B.A. in 1587, having become a fellow 24 Aug. 1586. He graduated M.A. in 1591. Bishop Piers promised him a prebend, but he preferred to study medicine. After leaving college he resided for some time with Archbishop Whitgift, then visited Italy, and took the degree of M.D. at Padua. On his return home he engaged in military service, and was with Sir John Norris and the Earl of Southampton in Ireland and the Netherlands. In the Low Countries he is said to have been taken prisoner and detained for a time at Dunkirk. He reached London in 1603, and shortly afterwards commenced to practise, attaining to the highest eminence in his profession. He was admitted a candidate of the College of Physicians on 30 Sept. 1605, and a fellow on 25 June 1608. He was censor in 1614, 1620, 1621, 1623, 1624, 1625, 1631, and 1632; registrar on 20 Nov. 1627, on the death of Dr. Matthew Gwinne; treasurer on 3 Dec. 1629, on Harvey's resignation of that office; anatomy reader, 1630; elect, 22 Dec. 1630, in place of Dr. Thomas Moundeford, deceased; president from 1634 to 1640; consiliarius in 1641. He died at the college house at Amen Corner, Paternoster Row, on 20 April 1642. In his will, dated 21 Oct. 1641, proved by his nephew, Thomas Fox, he describes himself as of the parish of St. Martin's, Ludgate, London, and desires ‘to be buried in Christian buriall within the Cathedrall Church of St. Paule in London, as neere to the monument of Doctor Lynacer as conveniently may be,’ bequeathing the sum of 20l. ‘towards the repayring of the same Cathedrall’ (registered in P. C. C. 51, Cambell). He was buried according to his directions on 24 April. He also bequeathed to the college 40l., to which his nephew added another 60l. ‘On 22 Dec. 1656 the college, on the proposition of Dr. Baldwin Hamey, unanimously voted the erection of a marble bust to his memory in the Harveian Museum;’ the statue was destroyed in the great fire of 1666, as was his monument in St. Paul's erected by his nephew. His portrait in the college was one of two pictures rescued from the fire, but has disappeared. He attended John Donne, dean of St. Paul's, and contributed liberally towards the erection of a monument to his memory. In Harleian MS. 416 (ff. 203b, 210, 214) are three Latin letters of Fox, two of which are addressed to his father and brother Samuel respectively. The life of his father prefixed to the second volume of the 1641 edition of the ‘Actes and Monuments,’ long attributed to his brother Samuel, has lately been assigned, on very feeble grounds, to Simeon himself. He was certainly alive at the date of its publication, when Samuel had been dead twelve years. But internal evidence does not justify Simeon's claim to the memoir [see Foxe, John, ad fin.]
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. (1878), i. 147–8; Harwood's Alumni Eton. p. 193; Winters's Biographical Notes on John Foxe, pp. 33, 36–38.]
FOY, NATHANIEL, D.D. (d. 1707), bishop of Waterford and Lismore, son of John Foy, M.D., was born at York, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, of which he became a senior fellow (M.A. 1671, B.D. and D.D. 1684). He was ordained priest in 1670, and in the same year was installed as a canon of Kildare. On 20 Dec. 1678 he was appointed minister of the parish of St. Bride, Dublin. In the reign of James II he stood up boldly in defence of the established church. Crowds assembled at St. Bride's every alternate Sunday to hear his replies to the sermons delivered at Christ Church on the preceding Sundays by a doctor of the Sorbonne in the presence of the king. This task he accomplished by means of abstracts of his antagonist's arguments supplied to him by gentlemen who wrote shorthand. He was prevented from preaching on several occasions by the menaces of some of the king's guard, and his firmness in supporting the protestant faith fled to his being imprisoned, together with Dr. King and other clergymen.
After the battle of the Boyne his constancy was rewarded by William III, who promoted him to the united sees of Waterford and Lismore by letters patent 13 July 1691. In September 1695 he was imprisoned in Dublin Castle for three days by order of the House of Lords, because he had spoken disrespectfully of that assembly in a protest against the rejection of a bill for union and division of parishes. He died in Dublin on 31 Dec. 1707, and was buried at the west end of Waterford Cathedral, in St. Saviour's Chapel.
During his lifetime he expended 800l. on the improvement of the palace at Waterford, and by his will he established and endowed the free school at Grantstown. His only publication is ‘A Sermon preached in Christ's Church, Dublin, on 23 Oct. 1698, being the anniversary thanksgiving for putting an end to the Irish Rebellion, which broke out on that day 1641. Before the House of Lords,’ Dublin 1698, 4to.
[Ware's Bishops (Harris), p. 543; Cotton's Fasti, i. 130, ii. 250, v. 29, 273; Taylor's Univ. of Dublin, p. 416; Todd's Cat. of Dublin Graduates, p. 207; Killen's Eccl. Hist. of Ireland, ii. 184; Luttrell's Hist. Relation of State Affairs, ii. 213,
