Of these two instances he first records one relating to a child who was a servant in his house.  The boy’s father had taught him “his ungracious heresy against the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar,” which heresy the boy began to teach another child in Mores house.  Thereupon, More caused a servant of his “to stripe him like a child” before the whole household, “for amendment of himself and example of such others.”  The other case was that of a man who, “after that he had fallen into that frantic heresy, fell soon after into plain open frenzy besides.”  The man was confined in Bedlam, and when discharged went about disturbing public service in churches, and committing acts of great indecency.  Devout, religious folk besought the Chancellor to restrain him, and accordingly, one day when he came wandering by Mores door, he caused him to be taken by the constables, bound to a tree in the street before the whole town, “and there they striped him with rods till he waxed weary, and somewhat longer.”  More ends by saying, “And verily, God be thanked, I hear none harm of him now.  And of all that ever came in my hands for heresy, as help me God, saving [as I said] the sure keeping of them, had never any of them stripe or stroke given them, so much as a fillip on the forehead.”

He then goes on to disprove the truth of a story spread about by Tindal, concerning the beating in his garden of a man named Segar.  This story Foxe evidently confused with the fable of Tewkesbury, which thus completely crumbles to pieces; for as Sir James Mackintosh in his Life of More says: 

“This statement [More’s Apology] so minute, so easily contradicted if in any part false, was made public after his fall from power, when he was surrounded by enemies, and could have no friends but the generous.  He relates circumstances of public notoriety, or at least so known to all his household, which it would have been rather a proof of insanity than of imprudence to have alleged in his defence if they had not been indisputably and confessedly true . . .  Defenceless and obnoxious as More then was, no man was hardy enough to dispute his truth.  Foxe was the first, who, thirty years afterwards, ventured to oppose it in a vague statement, which we know to be in some respects inaccurate.” *

* Pp. 101, 105.

The story of the death of Robert Packington, mercer, of London, has also provided Foxe with fertile soil for raising his usual crop of calumny.  The man was shot dead one very misty morning, in Cheapside, according to most chroniclers in 1556, Foxe says in 1558, as he was crossing the road from his house to a church on the opposite side, where he intended to hear Mass.  Many persons were suspected of the murder, but none were found guilty.  Hall, Grafton, and Bale all tell the story, but the martyrologist added thereto an accusation against an innocent person, which, although satisfactorily refuted by Holinshed, remains in the pages of the Acts and Monuments to this day.  Foxe says:—­