“ The Lady Margaret Beaufort made him one of her executors, and in this capacity as well as in that of chancellor, he had the chief share with Fisher in regulating the foundation of St John’s College and the Lady Margaret professorships and readerships. His financial work brought him a less enviable notoriety, though a curious freak of history has deprived him of the credit which is his due for “Morton’s fork.” ”

“ It is not known at what school he was educated, nor at what college, though the presumption is in favour of Magdalen, Oxford, whence he drew so many members of his subsequent foundation, Corpus Christi. He also appears to have studied at Cambridge, but nothing definite is known of the first thirty-five years of his career. ”

“ Wolsey’s rapid rise in 1511 put an end to Fox’s influence. The pacific policy of the first two years of Henry VIII.’s reign was succeeded by an adventurous foreign policy directed mainly against France; and Fox complained that no one durst do anything in opposition to Wolsey’s wishes. Gradually Warham and Fox retired from the government; the occasion of Fox’s resignation of the privy seal was Wolsey’s ill-advised attempt to drive Francis I. out of Milan by financing an expedition led by the emperor Maximilian in 1516. ”