“In the very same chapter and leaf concerning the severe punishment upon persecutors of God’s People, he hath committed a most egregious falsity in reporting that one Grimwood, of Higham, in Suffolk, died in a miserable manner, for swearing and bearing false witness against one John Cooper, a carpenter of Watsam in the same county, for which he lost his life.  The miserable death of the said Grimwood was, as John Foxe saith thus:  That when he was in his labour, staking up A Gosse of Corn, having his health, and fearing no peril, suddenly his Bowels fell out of his body, and immediately most miserably he died. Now it so fell out that in the reign of Elizabeth, one Prit* became parson of the parish where the said Grimwood dwelt, and preaching against perjury, being not acquainted with his parishioners, cited the said story of Foxe, and it happened that Grimwood being alive, and in the said church, he brought an action upon the case, against the parson, but Judge Anderson, who sate at the Assizes in the county of Suffolk, did adjudge it not maintainable, because it was not spoken maliciously."**

* Or Prick.

** Anthony d Wood, Athenae Oxoniensis, vol. i., p. 691.

That the action was not maintainable on the ground of malice, as against the parson, may have been true, but Foxe cannot reasonably be acquitted, for although he went into Suffolk professedly to investigate the matter, he never made any alteration in his story in subsequent editions, and the very latest impression of the Acts and Monuments perpetuates the lie and slander.

Thirty years after the death of Sir Thomas More, Foxe undertook to collect all the traditional gossip afloat concerning the Chancellor’s alleged treatment of John Tewkesbury and James Bainham, for heresy.  Tewkesbury was a leather-seller of London, and Foxe says that he was sent to Sir Thomas Mores house at Chelsea to be examined, and that “there he lay in the porter’s lodge, hand, foot, and head in the stocks, six days without release.  Then was he carried to Jesus’ Tree in his privy garden, where he was whipped, and also twisted in his brows with a small rope, that the blood started out of his eyes, and yet would not accuse no man.  Then was he let loose for a day, and his friends thought to have him at liberty the next day.  After this he was sent to be racked in the Tower, till he was almost lame, and there promised to recant.*

* Acts and Monuments, vol. iv., p. 689; Pratt’s ed.

The truth of the matter was, however, that as Tewkesbury was examined for the first time on the 8th May 1529, and immediately afterwards recanted, the event occurred several months before Sir Thomas More became Lord Chancellor; and therewith falls to the ground the story of Tewkesbury’s being tortured in Mores garden, the punishment of heretics being part of the Lord Chancellor’s office.