36 
entry of certain customary fees paid on the entry into office as 
Sheriffs of the city for this very year, by “ WitLiam JENKINS 
and Wiiu1am Bonn.” 
Nothing so tests a witness as an examination upon petty 
details, because they are precisely what anyone framing an 
untrue story would naturally overlook. It was not essential 
to Foxr’s narrative of the burning of a Gloucester man at 
Salisbury, to state that his wife came to visit him while there 
in prison, and that her name was Axice; yet he does so per- . 
fectly naturally; and here centuries after, an archeologist in 
Cheltenham stumbles on an old court roll, in which Jonny 
CuBBERLEY is described as lately burned for divers heresies at 
Salisbury, and in which also it speaks of Anice, widow of 
this Joun Cupperzey, claiming his lands at Cheltenham in 
virtue of a peculiar local custom. 
At the same time, here three hundred and twenty three years 
after the event, we find a dry business book of receipts and 
expenses supporting in the minutest details the account given 
by Foxe of the imprisonment and martyrdom of Bishop Hooprr 
at Gloucester. 
It is clear as sunlight that no work in the world could stand 
the successive tests of an enforced national publicity for its 
statements at the moment of its being written ; of the cautious 
examination of historians like Srrypr and Frovps, at a wide 
interval of time; and of comparison with local records after the 
lapse of centuries, unless it were as a whole true and trustworthy. 
Let us now compare the description of the spot on which 
Foxe states the burning to have taken place, with the circum- 
stances under which the piece of oak forming the subject of 
this paper, was discovered; and, I believe, no one who is capable 
of an impartial judgment, will fail to be struck with the perfect 
accordance between them. 
Foxe describes Hoorrer as led between the two sheriffs, 
‘his hatte vpon his head, and a staffe in his hand to stay himself withal; 
‘for the grief of the sciatica, which hee had taken in prison, caused him 
“‘somethyng to halt. * * * When he came to the place appoynted, 
«¢where he should dye, smilingly he beheld the stake and preparation made 
‘«for him, which was neare vnto the great Elme tree ouer agaynst y™ 
