38 
We are not all gifted alike, and while some people are satisfied 
with the simplest and most likely way of accounting for things, 
there are others who have a special faculty for making difficulties 
where none exist, and who, asthe French put it, like to “chercher 
midi & quatorze hewres.”” Some of these may doubt the possibility 
of such a thing being found, as the remnant of the stake at 
which a man was burned in the time of Mary Tupor; but if 
it be once granted Jonn Hoorrr was burned for heresy, there 
is no improbability in the particular spot having been selected, 
which Foxe describes; nor in the lower portion of the stake 
having been left in the ground on that spot, seeing it was not 
worth the trouble of digging out at the time. Further, as oak 
constantly turns up in a fair state of preservation, hundreds of 
years older than the time of the Tuvors, there is nothing in 
itself remarkable, or staggering even to a weak faith, in the 
circumstance that a piece of oak over 20 inches long, and 9 in 
diameter, should be found when the earth around it was being 
carted away. It would have been more remarkable if, under 
the circumstances, it had not been found.* 
* It has been suggested to me that others may have been burned on the 
same spot; and that, therefore, this particular stake may not necessarily 
have been the one at which Hooper suffered. But the site was not one 
which would ordinarly be so employed. It was evidently selected in accor- 
dance with the royal order, as the nearest possible to the scene of HoopEr’s 
former preaching (i.e. the Cathedral): being just between the college 
precincts, and the then graveyard, to which it has since been added. 
