A list of his Latin tracts and sermons is given by Wood, and others, some of which were never printed, appear in Bale. Four editions of the Actes and Monuments appeared in Foxe’s lifetime. The eighth edition (1641) contains a memoir of Foxe purporting to be by his son Samuel, the MS. of which is in the British Museum (Lansdowne MS. 388). Samuel Foxe’s authorship is disputed, with much show of reason, by Dr S. R. Maitland in On the Memoirs of Foxe ascribed to his Son (1841). The best-known modern edition of the Martyrology is that (1837–1841) by the Rev. Stephen R. Cattley, with an introductory life by Canon George Townsend. The numerous inaccuracies of this life and the frequent errors of Foxe’s narrative were exposed by Dr Maitland in a series of tracts (1837–1842), collected (1841–1842) as Notes on the Contributions of the Rev. George Townsend, M.A. ... to the New Edition of Fox’s Martyrology. The criticism lavished on Cattley and Townsend’s edition led to a new one (1846–1849) under the same editorship. A new text prepared by the Rev. Josiah Pratt was issued (1870) in the “Reformation Series” of the Church Historians of England, with a revised version of Townsend’s Life and appendices giving copies of original documents. Later edition by W. Grinton Berry (1907).
Foxe’s papers are preserved in the Harleian and Lansdowne collections in the British Museum. Extracts from these were edited by J. G. Nichols for the Camden Society (1859). See also W. Winters, Biographical Notes on John Foxe (1876); James Gairdner, History of the English Church in the Sixteenth Century.
FOXGLOVE, a genus of biennial and perennial plants of the
natural order Scrophulariaceae. The common or purple foxglove,
D. purpurea, is common in dry hilly pastures and rocky places
and by road-sides in various parts of Europe; it ranges in Great
Britain from Cornwall and Kent to Orkney, but it does not
occur in Shetland or in some of the eastern counties of England.
It flourishes best in siliceous soils, and is not found in the Jura
and Swiss Alps. The characters of the plant are as follows:
stem erect, roundish, downy, leafy below, and from 18 in. to
5 ft. or more in height; leaves alternate, crenate, rugose, ovate
or elliptic oblong, and of a dull green, with the under surface
downy and paler than the upper; radical leaves together with
their stalks often a foot in length; root of numerous, slender,
whitish fibres; flowers 134-212 in. long, pendulous, on one side of
the stem, purplish crimson, and hairy and marked with eye-like
spots within; segments of calyx ovate, acute, cleft to the base;
corolla bell-shaped with a broadly two-lipped obtuse mouth, the
upper lip entire or obscurely divided; stamens four, two longer
than the other two (didynamous); anthers yellow and bilobed;
capsule bivalved, ovate and pointed; and seeds numerous,
small, oblong, pitted and of a pale brown. As Parkinson remarks
of the plant, “It flowreth seldome before July, and the
seed is ripe in August”; but it may occasionally be found in
blossom as late as September. Many varieties of the common
foxglove have been raised by cultivation, with flowers varying
in colour from white to deep rose and purple; in the variety
gloxinioides the flowers are almost regular, suggesting those of
the cultivated gloxinia. Other species of foxglove with variously
coloured flowers have been introduced into Britain from the
continent of Europe. The plants may be propagated by unflowered
off-sets from the roots, but being biennials are best
raised from seed.
 |
| Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea), one-third nat. size. |
| 1. Corolla cut open showing the four stamens; rather more than half nat. size. 2. Unripe fruit cut lengthwise, showing the thick axial placenta bearing numerous small seeds. 3. Ripe capsule split open. |
The foxglove, probably from folks’-glove, that is fairies’ glove, is known by a great variety of popular names in Britain. In the south of Scotland it is called bloody fingers; farther north, dead-men’s-bells; and on the eastern borders, ladies’ thimbles, wild mercury and Scotch mercury. In Ireland it is generally known under the name of fairy thimble. Among its Welsh synonyms are menyg-ellyllon (elves’ gloves), menyg y llwynog (fox’s gloves), bysedd cochion (redfingers) and bysedd y cwn (dog’s fingers). In France its designations are gants de notre dame and doigts de la Vierge. The German name Fingerhut (thimble) suggested to Fuchs, in 1542, the employment of the Latin adjective digitalis as a designation for the plant. Other species of foxglove or Digitalis although found in botanical collections are not generally grown. For medicinal uses see Digitalis.
FOX INDIANS, the name, from one of their clans, of an Algonquian
tribe, whose former range was central Wisconsin. They
call themselves Muskwakiuk, “red earth people.” Owing to
heavy losses in their wars with the Ojibways and the French,
they allied themselves with the Sauk tribe about 1780, the two
tribes being now practically one.
FOX MORCILLO, SEBASTIAN (1526?–1559?), Spanish scholar
and philosopher, was born at Seville between 1526 and 1528.
About 1548 he studied at Louvain, and, following the example
of the Spanish Jew, Judas Abarbanel, published commentaries
on Plato and Aristotle in which he endeavoured to reconcile
their teaching. In 1559 he was appointed tutor to Don Carlos,
son of Philip II., but did not live to take up the duties of the post,
as he was lost at sea on his way to Spain. His most original
work is the De imitatione, seu de informandi styli ratione libri II.
(1554), a dialogue in which the author and his brother take part
under the pseudonyms of Gaspar and Francisco Enuesia. Among
Fox Morcillo’s other publications are: (1) In Topica Ciceronis
paraphrasis et scholia (1550); (2) In Platonis Timaeum commentarii
(1554); (3) Compendium ethices philosophiae ex Platone,
Aristotele, aliisque philosophis collectum; (4) De historiae institutione
dialogus (1557), and (5) De naturae philosophia.
He is the subject of an excellent monograph by Urbano Gonzalez de Calle, Sebastián Fox Morcillo: estudio histórico-crítico de sus doctrinas (Madrid, 1903).
FOY, MAXIMILIEN SÉBASTIEN (1775–1825), French general
and statesman, was born at Ham in Picardy on the 3rd
of February 1775. He was the son of an old soldier who had
fought at Fontenoy and had become post-master of the town
in which he lived. His father died in 1780, and his early instruction
was given by his mother, a woman of English origin and of
