The expectations of readers of differing religious beliefs, social status, and gender molded the reception of the Book of Martyrs. They interpreted its highly variable and malleable text in radically different ways that tracked the full range of the religio-political spectrum of early modern England. Changing habits and practices of different categories of readers had an important impact on the passage through the printing house of the many hand-press editions. Readership expectations are most immediately evident at the level of typography, in which the choreography of italic, roman, and black-letter founts addressed the changing requirements of a stratified audience comprised of literati and illiterati during an era that spanned the abandonment of black letter in favor of roman type. Manipulation of reading practices played an important role, furthermore, in the shared endeavor of John Day and John Foxe in generating a pictorial program accessible even to illiterate individuals who were unable to read the text for themselves.

In collaboration with his associates, Foxe sets forth his own ideas about reading in an elaborate array of prefaces, both in Latin and in English, in other forms of paratext including marginal glosses, and in comments within the body of the text (see Chapter 1.E). For example, he invites members of the reading public to join in the assessment of evidence by interrogating reputed miracles (“Whereof let every reader use hys owne judgment”) or visions (“This only which hath out of the mans owne mouth bene receaved, so as I receaved it of the parties, I thought here to communicate to the reader, for him to judge therof as God shall rule his minde”).