The witnesses to the vision were, in the case of John Oxenham, Robert Woodley and Humphry King. Robert Woodley does occur in the register under date 1664. Mary Stephens was witness to the visions when Rebecca and Thomasine the babe died, and Mary Stephens does occur in the register under the date 1667, but none of the other witnesses, Humphry King, Elizabeth Frost, Joan Tooker, and Elizabeth Averie, widow. Consequently there is negative evidence that Thomasine, elder and younger, and Rebecca never existed save in the imagination of the author of the catch-penny tract. We come now to James Howell’s account, in his _Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ; or Familiar Letters_. The first edition of the first series of these letters was published in the year 1645, four years after the tract had appeared. About the year 1642 he had been committed to the Fleet, and there confined for eight years. He states in his Letter IX, in Sect. 6, in a letter to Mr. E. D.:-- “/Sir/,--I thank you a thousand times for the Noble entertainment you gave me at _Berry_, and the pains you took in shewing me the Antiquities of that place. In requitall, I can tell you of a strange thing I saw lately here, and I beleeve ’tis true: As I pass’d by Saint Dunstans in Fleet street the last Saturday, I stepp’d into a Lapidary or Stone-cutters Shop, to treat with the Master for a Stone to be put upon my Father’s Tomb; And casting my eies up and down, I might spie a huge Marble with a large inscription upon ’t, which was thus to my best remembrance:-- “_Here lies_ John Oxenham, _a goodly young man, in whose Chamber, as he was strugling with the pangs of death, a Bird with White-brest was seen fluttering about his Bed, and so vanish’d._ “_Here lies also_ Mary Oxenham, _the sister of the said John, who died the next day, and the same Apparition was seen in the Room._ “Then another sister is spoke of. Then, _Here lies hard by_ James Oxenham,_ the son of the said_ John, _who died a child in his cradle a little after, and such a Bird was seen fluttering about his head a little before he expir’d, which vanish’d afterwards_. “At the bottom of the Stone ther is-- “_Here lies_ Elizabeth Oxenham, _the Mother of the said_ John, _who died 16 yeers since, when such a Bird, with a White-Brest, was seen about her Bed before her death._ “To all these ther be divers Witnesses, both Squires and Ladies, whose names are engraven upon the Stone: This Stone is to be sent to a Town hard by _Excester_, wher this happend.”