Bishop Morgan, retiring after his deprivation to and near Oxon, where he had several relations and acquaintance living, particularly the Owens of Godstow in the parish of Wolvercote, near the said city, did spend the little remainder of his life in great devotion at Godstow, but that he died in the condition which Fox mentions, there is no tradition among the inhabitants of Wolvercote. True it is that I have heard some discourse many years ago from some of the ancients of that place, that a certain Bishop did live for some time, and exercised his charity and religious counsel among them, and there died, but I could never learn anything of them of the manner of his death, which being very miserable as John Fox saith, methinks that they should have a tradition of it, as well as of the man himself, but I say there is now none, nor was there any thirty years ago, among the most aged persons then living at that place, and therefore whether there be anything of truth in it may be justly doubted; and especially for this reason, that in the very same chapter and leaf containing the severe punishment upon persecutors of God’s People, he hath committed a most egregious falsity in reporting that one Grimwood, of Higham in Suffolk, died in a miserable manner, for swearing and bearing false witness against one John Cooper, a carpenter of Watsam in the same county; for which he lost his life. The miserable death of the said Grimwood was as John Fox saith thus, that _when he was in his labour, staking up a gosse of corn, having his health, and fearing no peril, suddenly his bowels fell out of his body, and immediately most miserably he died_. Now it so fell out that in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, one Prick became parson of the parish where the said Grimwood dwelt, and preaching against perjury, being not acquainted with his parishioners, cited the said story of Fox, and it happening that Grimwood being alive, and in the said church, he brought an action upon the case against the parson, but Judge Anderson, who sate at the assizes, in the county of Suffolk did adjudge it not maintainable, because it was not spoken maliciously.”[537] That the case was not maintained on this ground, as against the parson, was no doubt fair and just, but Foxe cannot himself be as reasonably acquitted, for although he went into Suffolk to investigate the matter, he never made any alteration in his story, which has appeared in all the subsequent editions of his work. It would be beyond the scope of the present volume to indicate all the misstatements and distorted facts of which he was guilty, some being, no doubt, as much the result of the far too ambitious scheme of his undertaking, as of his preconceived malice.