A much fuller account of Porter is given in 1570 and subsequent editions. The sources for this brief account of a notorious case are not clear, but all the information given here could be sourced from John Bale's discussion of the case in Yet a course at the romyshe foxe. A dysclosynge or openynge of the Manne of synne (STC 1309: Antwerp, 1543), fo. 41r-v.

A particularly egregious example of Foxe's chronological confusion. This misplacing of this case is obvious - English texts of the Lord's Prayer and of the Bible were entirely legal in the latter part of Henry VIII's reign. To compound the confusion, in 1570 and subsequent editions, Thomas Barnard, husbandman, and James Mordon, labourer, are described (and, in 1576 and 1583, depicted) as being burned in one fire at Amersham, 'two or thre yeres' after the burning of William Tilsworth (aka Tylseley) in 1506 (1570, p. 117 recte 917). Yet a few pages later, they are described (1570 pp. 949-54) as Lollards arrested in 1521, with some details given of their offences and networks, and it is said that both were burned in the same year as relapsed heretics (1570, p. 964). In any event, they did not survive to be burned in the 1540s.

Foxe based his initial version of the panic - due to a false alarm of fire - at the penance of John Mallory, on his memory. (Foxe states in the Rerum that he witnessed the incident). There is, however, independent corroboration of Foxe's account, in a poem by John White, written in honour of John Claymund, who played a conspicuous - and according to White, heroic - role in the affair. (See John White, Diacosio-Martyrion {Louvain, 1553], STC 25388, fos 82r-83r). White also supplies a detail that Foxe omits, the date of the incident: the third Sunday of Advent, 1536. Foxe's first account of the panic appeared in the Rerum (pp. 139-44). This section was translated word-for-word in 1563. In 1570, Foxe added new details (the name of the person doing penance and the name of the person who started calling 'fire') which must have come, directly or indirectly, from others present at the incident. In the second edition, Foxe also deleted passages - originally in the Rerum - that explained to non-English readers how the English dealt with fires and that they roofed their churches with lead (this interesting passage, comparing methods of dealing with fire alarms in England and Germany first appears in the Rerum (p. 140) and was directly translated from that into the 1563 edition. It was dropped thereafter as Foxe no longer expected a large non-English audience for his martyrology). The version of the incident printed in 1570 was unchanged in subsequent editions. Foxe's purpose in printing this anecdote is not obvious. The story involves neither a martyrdom nor an important episode in the history of the Reformation. Foxe probably included the story precisely because it was not a martyrdom. As he descibes it, it is a 'merry and pleasant Interlude'which breaks up a grim narrative of persecutions following the Act of Six Articles. At the same time, it allowed Foxe to expostulate on the horror of burning people to death for heresy.

Thomas S. Freeman.