FOLEY, HENRY. - Jesuit, historian, b. at Astley (Worcester) on 9 Aug. 1811, d. at Roehampton on 19 Nov. 1891. Under the influence of the “Oxford movement,” he embraced Catholicism in 1846, and five years later, after the death of his wife, asked to enter the Society of Jesus as a coadjutor brother. For 30 years he remained in the direct service of the Provincial and during this time collected and published The records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (8 vols., London 1877–83); a compilation rather than a continuous history, but exceedingly rich in documents concerning the religious struggles and Jesuit martyrs in England in the 16th and 17th centuries. He also wrote Jesuits in conflict (London 1873), a series of biographies of several missionary fathers during the persecutions of the same period.
