[1] Foulkes, according to Anthony à Wood, "became a servitor of Christ Church, Oxford, in Michaelmas term 1651, where he continued more than four years, under the tuition and government of Presbyterians and independents.
There was speculation when Ann was sent away from the parish to give birth at West Felton to an illegitimate baby girl, born in or about May 1674, held to have been sent for fostering by a wet-nurse elsewhere; the child's paternity was never firmly proved but was allegedly Foulkes's.
[7] In the summer of 1676, Foulkes was admonished by the Bishop of Hereford, Herbert Croft, after complaints about the relationship and other misbehaviour were brought before a consistory court in Ludlow,[8] and he also reportedly beat his wife and a churchwarden who tried to intervene at his rectory house on the same night, after drinking at a bowling match.
[9] He seduced the young lady who resided with him, took a lodging for her in York Buildings in the Strand, and there made away with the child that was born on 11 December 1678, by stabbing it in the throat with a knife and disposing of the body down a privy emptying into the River Thames.
William Lloyd, dean of Bangor, who came to him the very evening after his condemnation, managed to obtain for him, through Compton, Bishop of London, a few days' reprieve, which he employed in writing forty pages of cant, entitled "An Alarme for Sinners: containing the Confession, Prayers, Letters, and Last Words of Robert Foulkes, … with an Account of his Life.