in many instances to the letters of the martyrs themselves;[15] of all which documents, says Strype, he has been found, by those who have compared his books with his authorities, to have made a faithful use.  He lived many years after his first edition was published, which was in 1563, and in the interval laboured to render it still more perfect; suppressing where he found reason to doubt, as in the story of Cranmer’s heart remaining unconsumed when the rest of his body was reduced to ashes;[16] enlarging where he was furnished with fresh matter which he thought trustworthy, as in the story of Gardiner’s being stricken with sickness on the day of Cranmer’s martyrdom;[17] and taking journeys in order to confront witnesses and sift evidence when his facts chanced to be called in question;[18] such was his industry.  But, independently of all knowledge of this, his pains-taking, the internal evidence of the book is enough to establish its general good faith.  There is a simplicity in the narrative, particularly in many of its minute details, which is beyond all fiction; a homely pathos in the stories which art could not reach.  Sometimes an expression casually drops out which suffices to prove the testimony to be that of an eye-witness; thus, where the terrible death of Ridley is described, the martyrologist speaks in general in his own person; yet we read, that “after the legs of the sufferer were consumed by reason of his struggling through the pain, he showed that side toward us clean, shirt and all untouched with flame,” as though the informant (whose words the historian had here neglected to accommodate) had been himself the spectator.  Sometimes there is a frank confession of ignorance, where a less scrupulous writer would have been under a great temptation to supply the defect of information by conjecture; thus, in the details of the same execution of Ridley and Latimer, it is observed, that after they rose from their knees the one talked with the other a little while, but what they said, adds Fox, “I can learn of no man.”  Above all, there is such candour in the developement even of his most favourite characters, their failings as well as their virtues so fairly told, that it is plain they have not been packed.  Thus it is by him we are taught that Cranmer moved the King to the execution of Joan of Kent, though Cranmer’s general disposition would seem repugnant to such an office, and though no mention is made in Edward’s Journal of any such interference, or, indeed, of any reluctance on his own part which should render it needful:  thus of Latimer, he does not conceal that he probably subscribed on one occasion certain articles which the bishops presented to him, of fear rather than of conscience;[19] and of Hooper, his favourite, if he had one among the martyrs, that he disputed too pertinaciously, and to the breach of mutual charity, with his opponents on the subject of the episcopal habits, and that the prospect of their approaching death for the common