“The murtherer so covertly was concealed, till at length by the confession of Doctor Incent, Dean of St. Paul’s, in his deathbed it was known, and by him confessed that he was the author thereof, by hiring an Italian for sixty crowns or thereabouts to do the feat.  For the testimony whereof, and also of the repentant words of the said Incent, the names, both of them which heard him confess it, and of them which heard the witnesses report it, remains yet in memory to be produced if need required."*

* P. 525, edited 1563.

But Holinshed, a far more credible witness tells us that:—­

“At length the murtherer indeed was condemned at Banbury, in Oxfordshire, to die for a felony which he afterwards committed; and when he came to the gallows in which he suffered, he confessed that he did this murther [that of Robert Packington], and till that time he was never had in any suspicion thereof."*

* Chronicle, fol. ed., 1586, p. 944.  Answer to Foxes assertion.  Also Appendix to Gough’s Narratives, pp. 296, 297.

There is another class of anecdote in the Acts and Monuments, the errors of which do not lie so much in the facts of the story as in the oblique vision of Foxe himself, in regarding the dramatis personae, as heroes.  Thus, a madman named Collins, who, entering a church during Mass, seized his dog at the Elevation, and held it over his head, showing it to the people in derision, is accounted “as one belonging to the holy company of saints."*

* Acts and Monuments, vol. v., p. 25; Pratt’s ed.

Cowbridge, who was burned at Oxford, was one who would in these days be called a criminal lunatic, but Foxe regarded him as a holy martyr.  The horrible story of the " martyrdom " of three women of Guernsey rests entirely on Foxes authority.  It was immediately contradicted.  Foxe replied, and Father Persons refuted his reply.  It transpired on investigation that all three women were hanged as thieves, their bodies being afterwards burned; one of them had led an openly immoral life.

Machyn and Wriothesley chronicle an outbreak of fanaticism on Easter Sunday 1555.  An ex-monk named Flower rushed into St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster, while the priest, Sir John Sleuther, was administering Communion to his parishioners.  Foxe tells the tale succinctly:—­

“The said Flower, upon Easter Day last past, drew his wood knife, and strake the priest upon the head, hand, and arm, who being wounded therewith, and having a chalice with consecrated hosts therein in his hand, they were sprinkled with the said priest’s blood."*

* Ibid. vol. vii., p. 75.

The only mistake which Foxe here makes is in saying that the priest was Sir John Cheltham.  The would-be assassin harangued his victim before dealing the blow, and then struck home so forcibly that the priest fell as if dead.  A tumult arose, the multitude thinking that the Spaniards were attacking them.  Flower was apprehended, tried, and burned for heresy and sedition, on the spot now called the Broad Sanctuary.  His claim to swell Foxe’s calendar of “martyrs” rests solely on the motive of his murderous assault, namely, outrage of the Blessed Sacrament.