Family and Education

b. by 1515, 1st s. of William Foxe, and bro. of Charles. educ. Broadgates Hall, Oxf. in Sept. 1531; L. Inn, adm. 28 June 1536. m. by 1545, Catherine, da. of Thomas Trentham of Shrewsbury, wid of Thomas Hakluyt (d.1544) of Eyton in Leominster, Herefs., 1s. 1da.1

Offices Held

Jt. (with bro. Charles) clerk of the signet to the council in the marches of Wales 1540-d.2

Biography

Edmund Foxe and his younger brother Charles obtained in 1537 the reversion to two offices under the council in the marches. The grant may have been favoured by Cromwell, for whom in the previous year the elder Foxe had been the bearer of a letter to a monk at Worcester; although the monk described him as one of Cromwell’s servants, his name does not occur in lists of the minister’s household. It was while his father was in London for the Parliament of 1536 that he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, where he was to discharge several minor offices.3

When in 1540 the clerkship of the signet passed to Foxe and his brother, Charles Foxe’s ambition to add to it the secretaryship of the council was resented by their colleagues; Foxe also quarrelled with Humphrey Coningsby, who in November 1541, after a previous incident at Ludlow, assaulted him near Temple Bar. Although their unpopularity did not prevent the brothers from being returned for Ludlow to the Parliament of 1542, their conduct during the first session did nothing to redeem it: while Foxe himself sued Coningsby in the Star Chamber, both brothers brought accusations against the president of the council. The outcome of the Star Chamber suit is not known, but after the president had replied the brothers were committed to the Fleet. They claimed privilege of Parliament, and the Privy Council allowed this by freeing them under bond to appear before it regularly while Parliament continued to sit and thereafter from time to time until licensed to depart. It was doubtless as a consequence of this episode that they failed to obtain the clerkship of the council on Thomas Hakluyt’s death in 1544, even though Foxe married Hakluyt’s widow; as an added irritant he was sued in Chancery by the dead man’s relatives for withholding title deeds.4

Foxe leased from his father the estates of the hospital of St. John in Ludlow, and it was at the hospital’s ‘capital house’ in Ludford that he died. By his will, made when he was ill on 7 Oct. 1550 and proved on the following 27 Nov., he named Reginald Corbet, Richard Cupper and his brother-in-law William Hopton feoffees to a settlement of his property on his father and wife, with remainders to his children and relatives. He provided for the payment to his stepchildren of their legacies under their father’s will, remembered his servant Edward Upton, and appointed Richard Corbet and Edward Hosier amongst others to assist his wife in executing the will. The wardship of his five year-old son Edward was acquired by Nicholas Bacon, and his widow married as her third husband Nicholas Depden.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Alan Harding

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from younger brother’s. Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxviii), 191-2; Add. 6276, ff. 23v-29v; Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. (ser. 2), xii. 123-6; Emden, Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. 1501-40, p. 212; PCC 28 Coode; C142/93/96.
• 2. LP Hen. VIII, xii.
• 3. Ibid. x, xii; Black Bk. L. Inn, i. 255, 256, 269, 285.
• 4. P. H. Williams, Council in the Marches of Wales, 159-61, 236-7; St.Ch.2/15/250-66; PPC, vii. 31, 35, 306, 322-3, 325-6; APC, i. 16; C1/1133/2.
• 5. PCC 28 Coode; C142/93/96; CPR, 1550-3, p. 109; 1553, p. 377.