A canon of St Paul’s in London, he took advantage of the religious upheaval under Henry VIII to contract marriage and had ten children. He published, probably at Witternberg (where he served as pastor), under the pseudonym Thomas Matthew, the edition of the Bible known as the Matthew Bible (a skilful combination of the Tyndale and Catechism versions). Under Edward VI he became a Protestant and was reckoned among the ablest theologians in England. Under Mary Tudor, cited on 22 January 1555 before an ecclesiastical tribunal presided over by Bishop Gardiner (q.v.), he refused to submit to the Church and was condemned to the stake under the laws against Lollardy, which had been revived by a recent parliamentary decree.
The immense diffusion of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs helped to surround his name with an aura of martyrdom in the Anglican Church.