FOX (FOXE), RICHARD: English statesman, bishop of Winchester; b. at Ropesley, near Grantham (23 m. s.s.w. of Lincoln), Lincolnshire, c. 1448; d. at Winchester Oct. 5, 1528. He was educated at Winchester, at Magdalen College, Oxford, and at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and afterward studied theology and canon law in Paris, where he became a favorite of Henry, Earl of Richmond, then in exile. Henry entrusted him with the conduct of negotiations with the French court in the interest of an invasion of England, and, on his accession to the throne as Henry VII., conferred on him the offices of principal secretary of state and lord privy seal, and in 1487 appointed him bishop of Exeter. In 1492 Fox was translated to the see of Bath and Wells, in 1494 to that of Durham, and in 1501 to Winchester. Throughout the reign of Henry VII. his influence was supreme in affairs of State. He negotiated several important treatises with Austria, France, and Scotland, and arranged for the marriage of Princess Margaret with James IV. of Scotland. He was also chancellor of the University of Cambridge (1500), master of Pembroke Hall (1507-19), and one of the executors of Henry VII. Under Henry VIII. he was gradually succeeded, both in royal favor and political influence, by his former protégé, Thomas Wolsey. In 1516 he resigned the custody of the privy seal and retired to his diocese. Besides making liberal donations to numerous churches, hospitals and colleges, including Magdalen College, Oxford, and Pembroke College, Cambridge, he established and endowed schools at Taunton and Grantham, and founded (1516) Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which was the pioneer college of the Renaissance in the English universities. He established in the new institution a lectureship in Greek, which until then had not been officially recognized at either Oxford or Cambridge, brought over the Italian humanist, Ludovicus Vives, as reader of Latin, and required the reader of theology, in his interpretations of Scripture, to give the preference to the Greek and Latin Fathers rather than to scholastic commentators. Fox contributed to a little book entitled, A Contemplation of Sinners (London, 1499), edited the Processional (Rouen, 1508), and translated the rule of St. Benedict (London, 1517).