Thirty years after the death of Sir Thomas More, the martyrologist proceeded to collect all the traditional gossip afloat concerning the Chancellor’s treatment of certain individuals accused of heresy; and he gravely introduces it into his _Acts and Monuments_ as historical fact. All these fables had been refuted by More himself, in his famous _Apology_, made at a time when, although he stood alone, defenceless and obnoxious, none were bold enough to challenge his truth. We shall, later on, have occasion incidentally to notice cases of Foxe’s glaring inaccuracy; suffice it here to mention one instance, which is fairly representative of his manner. He chronicles the martyrdom at Newent, on the 25th September 1556, of “Jhon Horne and a woman”. On investigation it transpires, that the story is nothing more than an amplification of the burning of Edward Horne, who suffered on the 25th September 1558, and that no woman suffered at either of these times. This confusion was first notified by John Deighton, a friendly critic of the _Acts and Monuments_, clearly not disposed to magnify its imperfections. It is one of the many anomalies which confront the student of sixteenth century methods, that the _Book of Martyrs_ being what it is, a mass of unsorted fact and fiction, carelessly thrown together, often proved untrustworthy, rarely corrected, and at the best uncritical, one-sided and violent, should not merely have leapt into the foremost rank of contemporary literature, but should have attained in the popular estimation the level of the Bible itself. Foxe had been penniless when he returned to England in 1559, but the success of his book, first published in 1563, made his fortune. The Catholics called it derisively _Foxe’s Golden Legend_. In 1570, a second edition was printed, in two volumes folio, and Convocation decreed that the book designated by the canon as _Monumenta Martyrum_, should be placed in cathedral churches, and in the houses of the great ecclesiastical dignitaries. This decree, although never confirmed by Parliament, was so much in accordance with the Puritan tone of the whole Church of England at that time, that even parish churches, far and wide were furnished with copies of the work, chained side by side with the Bible. The vestry minutes of St. Michael’s Church, Cornhill, of the 11th January, 1571-72, ordered “that the booke of Martyrs of Mr. Foxe, and the paraphrases (of the Gospel) of Erasmus shalbe bowght for the church, and tyed with a chain to the Egle bras”. A few years ago, mutilated copies of the _Acts and Monuments_ might still be seen chained, in the parish churches of Apethorpe (Northamptonshire), of Arreton (Isle of Wight), of Chelsea, of Eustone (Oxfordshire), Kinver (Staffordshire), Lessingham (Norfolk), St. Nicholas (Newcastle-on-Tyne), Northwold (Norfolk), Stratford-on-Avon, Waltham, St. Cuthbert (Wells).[538]