So many souls were enlightened by Fryth’s writings, that this reformer contributed powerfully to the renovation of England. ‘One day, an Englishman,’ says Thomas Becon, prebendary of Canterbury and chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer, ‘having taken leave of his mother and friends, travelled into Derbyshire, and from thence to the Peak, a marvellous barren country,’ and where there was then ‘neither learning nor yet no spark of godliness.’ Coming into a little village named Alsop in the Dale, he chanced upon a certain gentleman also named Alsop, lord of that village, a man not only ancient in years, but also ripe in the knowledge of Christ’s doctrine. After they had taken ‘a sufficient repast,’ the gentleman showed his guest certain books which he called his _jewels_ and _principal treasures_: these were the New Testament and some books of Fryth’s. In these godly treatises this ancient gentleman occupied himself among his rocks and mountains both diligently and virtuously. ‘He did not only love the Gospel,’ adds Cranmer’s chaplain, he ‘_lived it also_.’[334] Fryth’s writings were not destined to be read always with the same avidity: the truth they contain is, however, good for all times. The books of the apostles and of the reformers which that gentleman of Alsop read in the sixteenth century were better calculated to bring joy and peace to the soul than the light works read with such avidity in the world. Footnote 317: Cranmer’s _Letters and Remains_, p. 246. Footnote 318: Tyndale to Fryth: Foxe, v. p. 132; Anderson, _Annals of Bible_, i. p. 357. Footnote 319: ‘For there should be no concourse of citizens.’—Foxe, _Acts_, viii. p. 696. Footnote 320: The narrative from which we learn these particulars is given in the eighth volume of Foxe’s _Acts_, and seems to have been written by the gentleman himself. The circumstance that it is drawn up so as to compromise neither himself nor Cranmer is of itself a confirmation. Footnote 321: Foxe, _Acts_, viii. p. 696. Footnote 322: Foxe, _Acts_, viii. Appendix. Footnote 323: Foxe, _Acts_, v. p. 12. Footnote 324: ‘Mit den Zähnen zu bissen.’—Plank. iii. p. 369. Footnote 325: ‘And surely I myself sent for him three or four times to persuade him.’—Cranmer, _Remains_, _Letters_, p. 246. Footnote 326: ‘There was no man willing to answer him in open disputation.’—Foxe, _Acts_, viii. p. 699. Footnote 327: Bishop Hooper, _Early Writings_, p. 245. Footnote 328: ‘Ego Frythus ita sentio, ita dixi, scripsi, affirmavi, &c.’—Foxe, _Acts_, v. p. 14. Footnote 329: Ibid. p. 15. Footnote 330: ‘All the Germans, both of Luther’s side and also of Œcolampadius.’—Tyndale and Fryth, _Works_, iii. p. 455. Footnote 331: Foxe, _Acts_, v. p. 18. Footnote 332: Becon, _Works_, iii. p. 11. Footnote 333: Foxe, _Acts_, v. p. 10. Footnote 334: Becon, _Jewel of Joy_ (Parker Soc.), p. 420.