the text declined, and by the nineteenth century it had narrowed to include mainly scholars and evangelicals. It was still sufficiently popular among them to warrant (at least) fifty-five printings of various abridgments in only a century, and to generate scholarly editions and commentary. Debate about Foxe's veracity and the text's contribution to anti-Catholic propaganda continued. Actes and Monuments survived whole primarily within academic circles, with remnants only of the original text appearing in abridgments, generically called The Book of Martyrs, or plain Foxe. Some copies, including that presented to Matthew Parker, were hand-coloured. Latin versions Foxe began his work in 1552, during the reign of Edward VI. Over the next thirty years, it developed from small beginnings (in Latin) to a substantial compilation, in English, filling two large folio volumes. In 1554, in exile, Foxe published in Latin at Strasbourg a foreshadowing of his major work, emphasizing the persecution of the English Lollards during the fifteenth century; and he began to collect materials to continue his story to his own day. Foxe published the version in Latin at Basel in August 1559, lacking sources, with the segment dealing with the Marian martyrs as "no more than a fragment." Of course, it was difficult to write contemporary English history while living (as he later said) "in the far parts of Germany, where few friends, no conference, [and] small information could be had." Nonetheless, the 1559 version gives substantial coverage of the persecution under Mary Tudor; for example Latimer, perhaps the most famous of the martyrs, is mentioned more frequently - average per page - in the 1559 version. The standard pdf reader program finds Latamer (Latamerus when nominative, etc) 66 times in the 1559 edition of 761 pages (8.7% instances per page in 1559). Likewise Cranmer 23.1% in 1559. than in the 1641 edition; The standard pdf reader program finds Latimer 230 times in the 1641 edition of 3282 pages (7.0% instances per page in 1641). Likewise Cranmer 9.1% in 1641. Another example is that much of the 1559 edition starting at the page numbered 230 deals with the reign of Mary Tudor, that is, 67% of the pages; The standard pdf reader first finds the number 1554 at the page numbered 230 and thereafter never finds any earlier date (searching for Arabic numerals in the 1559 edition, op cit). further, the 1559 edition only has four illustrations, of which