James Bainham was a lawyer, and Foxe declares that he was whipped at the Tree of Truth in Mores garden, and was then sent to the Tower to be racked, "and so he was, Sir Thomas More being present himself, till in a manner he had lamed him." Bainham, like Tewkesbury, recanted, and both of them bewailed and retracted their recantations, first before their friends in a Protestant gathering in Bow Lane, and afterwards in a Catholic Church, in consequence of which, according to Foxe, both were burned. But a part of what Foxe wrote about Tewkesbury in one edition of the Acts and Monuments he omitted in another, patching it on to Bainham's story, thus stultifying himself as regards both stories,* and affording us another signal illustration of the irresponsible and unscrupulous way in which he could deal with evidence.

* Vol. iv., p. 702; and Appendix, p. 769; Pratt's ed.

He further attributed to More the death of John Frith, who suffered death in 1533, a year after Sir Thomas had laid down his office, although in his Apology, the exchancellor referred to Frith as being then in the Tower, not committed by him but by "the King's Grace and his Council."*

* Apology, p. 887.

Foxe might easily, had he been so inclined, have verified these things by reference to the thirty-sixth chapter of the above-mentioned Apology, in which More answered the lies "neither few nor small that many of the blessed brethren have made and daily yet make by me." He goes on to say:—

"Divers of them have said that of such as were in my house while I was chancellor, I used to examine them with torments, causing them to be bound to a tree in my garden, and there piteously beaten. And this tale had some of those brethren so caused to be blown about, that a right worshipful friend of mine did of late, within less than this fortnight, tell unto another near friend of mine that he had of late heard much speaking thereof. What cannot these brethren say that can be so shameless to say thus? For of very truth, albeit that for a great robbery, or a heinous murder, or sacrilege in a church, with carrying away the pix with the Blessed Sacrament, or villainously casting it out, I caused sometimes such things to be done by some officers of the Marshalsea, or of some other prisons, with which ordering of them, and without any great hurt that afterwards should stick by them, I found out and repressed many such desperate wretches, as else had not failed to have gone farther; yet saving the sure keeping of heretics, I never did cause any such thing to be done to any of them in all my life except only twain."

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.