Gloucestershire, if not one of the largest, is certainly one of the fairest—as, indeed, its name is said to imply: from _Glaw_, an old British word signifying “fair”—it is one of the fairest, and it ought to be one of the most famous, counties of England. Many are its distinguished worthies: John de Trevisa was Vicar of Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, and a contemporary with John Wyclif, and, like him, he had a strong aversion to the practices of the Church of Rome, and an earnest desire to make the Scriptures known to his parishioners; and in Nibley, in Gloucestershire, was born, and lived, William Tyndale, in whose noble heart the great idea sprang up that Christian Englishmen should read the New Testament in their own mother-tongue, and who said to a celebrated priest, “If God spares my life, I will take care that a plough-boy shall know more of the Scriptures than you do.” The story of the great translator and martyr is most interesting. Gloucestershire has been famous, too, for its contributions to the noble army of martyrs, notably, not only James Baynham, but, in Gloucester, its bishop, John Hooper, was in 1555 burnt to death. In Berkeley the very distinguished physician, and first promulgator of the doctrine of vaccination, Dr. Edward Jenner, the son of the vicar, was born; and from the Old Bell, in Gloucester, went forth the wonderful preacher George Whitefield, to arouse the sleeping Church in England and America from its lethargy. The quaint old proverb to which we have already alluded—“As sure as God is in Gloucestershire”—was very complimentary, but not very correct; it arose from the amazing ecclesiastical wealth of the county, which was so rich that it attracted the notice of the papal court, and four Italian bishops held it in succession for fifty years; one of these, Giulio de Medici, became Pope Clement VII., succeeding Pope Leo X. in the papacy in 1523. This eminent ecclesiastical fame no doubt originated the proverb; but it acquired a tone of reality and truth rather from the martyrdom of its bishop than from the elevation of his predecessor to the papal tiara; rather from Tyndale, William Sarton, and his brother weaver-martyrs, than from its costly and magnificent endowments; from Whitefield and Jenner rather than from its crowd of priests and friars.