Henry, sometime in 1529, had been taking his pleasure at Woodstock, and in returning to Greenwich stopped for a night at Waltham Cross. Fox and Gardiner, who were with him, were lodged at the house of a gentleman, where they met an old acquaintance-Dr. Thomas Cranmer, of Jesus' College, Cambridge. Cranmer had been driven from the University by the plague, and was seeking safety with his friends in the country. At the supper table the divorce question was discussed, and the Cambridge doctor suggested a new mode of settling it. D'Aubigne thus gives the conversation:"The almoner and the secretary asked the doctor what he thought of the divorce. You are not in the right path,' said Cranmer to his friends; you should not cling to the decisions of the Church. There is a shorter and surer way which alone can give peace to the King's conscience.' What is that?' they both asked. The true question is this,' replied Cranmer, What says the Word of God? Discontinue these interminable Roman negotiations. When God has spoken. man must obey.' 'But how shall we know what God has said?' Consult the Universities; they will discern it more surely than Rome.""

The next day, having arrived at Greenwich, Fox and Gardiner lost no time in reporting this matter to the King. · Dr. Craumer," said Fox, "whom we met at Waltham yesterday thinks that the Bible should be the sole judge in your cause." Henry caught at this, exclaiming "Mother of God! (this was his customary oath) this man has the right sow by the ear." Cranmer was immediately sent for, and his life at Court began.

The results are well-known. Henry professed to be satisfied as to the course he should pursue, and taking the law into his own hands he married Anne Boleyn in 1532, and set the Pope at defiance. In March the next year, Cranmer was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury; and in May following (the Convocation having declared the King's marriage with Catherine unlawful) the Primate pronounced

the sentence of their separation; and about the same time confirmed the match with Anne Boleyn.

The

In 1535 Fox was engaged in another and most important foreign embassy. Henry, under the curse of Pope Paul, and fearing an alliance of the Catholic powers, felt forced to make some advances towards the Germans, whom the French Emperor was craftily courting. In order, therefore, "to counteract the French emissaries," Froude tells us, "Christopher Mount, in August, and in September, Fox, Bishop of Hereford, were despatched to warn the Lutheran princes of their intrigue, and to point out the course which the interests of Northern Europe" then required. business was weighty, and "the Bishop's instructions were drawn by the King," who must have had great confidence in the man to whom he committed so great and difficult a matter. "These advances," says the historian, "consented to by Henry, were the act of Cromwell, and were designed as the commencement of a Fedus Evangelicum-a league of the great reforming nations of Europe," which had been first suggested in a Privy Council in December, 1533. "It was a grand scheme," adds Froude," and history can never cease to regret that it was grasped at with too faint a hand." Fox seems to have ably fulfilled his part, but though "he succeeded in neutralising partially the scheming of the French and partially in attracting the sympathies of the German powers towards England," the union in one faith of the two great streams of the Teutonic race was not accomplished. Burnet attributes the failure to the overbearing demands of Henry.

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Fox, who was now Bishop of Hereford, had scarcely come. back from Germany before he was engaged in Convocation in a discussion on the Sacraments, the sufficiency of scripture, and other subjects. John Foxe, the Martyrologist, gives a lengthy report of the dispute in which, among others, Cranmer, Alexander Alesius, a Scotch theologian, and Stokesley, Bishop of London, took part. The man of Dursley bore himself bravely, directing most of his arguments against the doctrines.

maintained by Stokesley.

.6

In doing so he gave bold utterance to facts and sentiments which must have been as wormwood and gall to some of his opponents. His intercourse with the Protestant Germans had not been without powerful influence on himself. "The lay people do now know the Holy Scripture better than many of us.” There is nothing so feeble and weak, so that it be true, but it shall find place and be able to stand against all falsehood.” "Truth is the daughter of Time, and Time is the mother of Truth; and whatsoever is besieged by Truth cannot long continue; and upon whose side Truth doth stand, that ought not to be thought transitory, or that it will ever fall." Such were some of his utterances, closing with a quotation from Esdras, "A king is strong; wine is stronger; yet women be more strong; but truth excelleth all." In this strain he "copiously and discreetly" maintained some of the great principles of the Reformation; "vigorously seconding," says Burnet, "Cranmer's long and learned speech."

Of Fox as a Bishop there is little to be said. He seems to have spent as much time at Court as in his diocese; and to have been more actively engaged in matters temporal than in the discharge of the purely spiritual duties of his office. The year following his advancement to the See he was again sent abroad. This time it was to France. The object of his visit was to convey a message from Henry to the French King, explaining his marriage proceedings, and setting forth the treatment he had received from the Pope. It was a difficult and delicate business; but John Foxe records with much satisfaction the way in which it was accomplished:-"These, with other like injuries and wrongs of the Pope done to the King, the ambassador Master Fox did declare, open, and shew unto the French King."

The life of Fox closed early. Supposing he was twenty when he went to Cambridge, he would have been but forty-six at the time of his death in 1538. He bequeathed his body by will to the Church of St. Mary Hault, in London, of which, as Bishop of Hereford, he was patron.

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Burnet, in his "History of the Reformation," invariably speaks well of our worthy. He says 66 he was esteemed one of the best divines of the time, was of an 'ingenuous nature," and "much esteemed and employed by the King, to whom he was a very acceptable minister." Some of his political maxims have been much extolled, "An honourable peace," he said, "lasts long; but a dishonourable peace no longer than till Kings have power to break it: the surest way, therefore, to peace is a constant preparedness for war." Two things in his opinion were necessary to support a Government, "gold and iron-gold to reward its friends and iron to keep under its enemies," Fox was undoubtedly an able and a sagacious man; but in these sayings his wisdom appears in questionable shape.

NOTES.

1. The insolence of Bonner, when sent as envoy to Clement, was once somewhat checked by the Pope threatening to "burn him alive, or boil him in a cauldron of lead."

2.—It is very probable that Fox and Stokesley had known each other in Gloucestershire, Stokesley having been rector of Slimbridge.

ARCHBISHOP JUXON.

[1582-1663.]

HREE parishes bearing the common name of Comptom were formerly included in the boundaries of Gloucestershire-Compton Greenfield, seven miles from Bristol, and three from the New Passage; Compton Abdale, four miles west of Northleach, on the Cotswolds; and Little Compton, lying under Barton Hill, on the borders of Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, with Stow and Moreton each two or three miles distant. This last mentioned parish, bearing the ancient name of Compton Parva, formed part of the hundred of Deerhurst, and was so situated that at a certain point the counties of Gloucester, Warwick, and Oxford, with a detached portion of Worcestershire, ran together. this spot a pedestal stands, which at one time bore a sun-dial on its top, and on its south side the inscription :-"This is the Four-shire Stone." The legend is no longer correct. By Act of Parliament, a few years ago, Little Compton was transferred, for all civil purposes, to the hundred of Kineton, in the southern division of Warwickshire; but ecclesiastically the parish remains in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol, and is included in the deanery of Stow. Interesting facts connect the name of Dr. William Juxon with this lost piece of old Gloucestershire.

On.

In 1869, the late Rev. William Hennessey Marah, vicar of the parish, published a volume entitled "Memoirs of Archbishop Juxon: with a sketch of the Archbishop's parish, Little Compton." In this work the facts referred to are fully set forth.1

Dr. Juxon, son of Richard Juxon, was born at Chichester in 1582, and after being educated at the Merchant Taylors' School, London, became Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford,