12 Facts About Richard Foxe

Richard Foxe was successively Bishop of Exeter, Bath and Wells, Durham, and Winchester, and became Lord Privy Seal.

Richard Foxe's parents belonged to the yeoman class, and little is known about Foxe's early career.

Richard Foxe is thought to have studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, from which he drew many members of his subsequent foundation, Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Richard Foxe's activity was confined to political and especially diplomatic channels; during John Morton's lifetime, Foxe was his subordinate, but after the archbishop's death he was first in Henry's confidence, and had an important share in all the diplomatic work of the reign.

In 1500 Richard Foxe was elected chancellor of Cambridge University and in 1507 master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge.

Richard Foxe's colleagues were William Warham and Ruthal, but Warham and Foxe differed on the question of Henry's marriage, Foxe advising the completion of the match with Catherine of Aragon while Warham expressed doubts as to its canonical validity.

The pacific policy of the first two years of Henry VIII's reign was succeeded by a more aggressive foreign policy directed mainly against France; and Richard Foxe complained that no one dared do anything in opposition to Wolsey's wishes.

Richard Foxe resigned the privy seal because of Wolsey's ill-advised attempt to drive King Francis I of France out of Milan by financing an expedition led by Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1516.

Richard Foxe expressed himself as being as anxious for the reformation of the clergy as Simeon the Righteous for the coming of the Messiah; but was too old to accomplish much himself in the way of remedying the clerical and especially the monastic depravity, licence and corruption he deplored.

Richard Foxe's sight failed during the last ten years of his life, and Matthew Parker claimed that Wolsey suggested his retirement from his diocese on a pension.

Richard Foxe refused, and Wolsey had to wait until Richard Foxe's death before he could add occupation of Winchester to his holding the archdiocese of York and the abbey of St Albans, and thus leave Durham vacant as he hoped for his own illegitimate son.

Richard Foxe died at Wolvesey; Corpus possesses several portraits and other relics of its founder.