When London was a pleasanter place than it is to-day, when anglers
stretched their legs up Tottenham Hill on their way to fish in the Lee;
when the ‘best stands on Hackney river’ were competed for eagerly by
bottom fishers; when a gentleman in St. Martin’s Lane, between the
hedges, could ‘ask the way to Paddington Woods;’ when a hare haunted
Primrose Hill and was daily pursued by a gallant pack of harriers;
enfin, between three and four on the afternoon of October 17, 1678, two
common fellows stepped into the White House tavern in the fields north
of Marylebone, a house used as a club by a set of Catholic tradesmen.
They had been walking in that region, and, as the October afternoon was
drawing in, and rain was falling, they sought refuge in the White House.
It would appear that they had not the means of assuaging a reasonable
thirst, for when they mentioned that they had noticed a gentleman’s
cane, a scabbard, a belt, and some add a pair of gloves, lying at the
edge of a deep dry ditch, overgrown with thick bush and bramble,
the landlord offered the new comers a shilling to go and fetch the
articles.* But the rain was heavy, and probably the men took the
shilling out in ale, till about five o’clock, when the weather held up
for a while.
*A rather different account by the two original finders, Bromwell
and Walters, is in L’Estrange’s Brief History, iii. pp. 97, 98. The
account above is the landlord’s. Lords’ MSS., Hist. MSS. Com., xi. pp.
2, 46, 47.
The delay was the more singular if, as one account avers, the men had
not only observed the cane and scabbard outside of the ditch, on the
bank, but also a dead body within the ditch, under the brambles.* By
five o’clock the rain had ceased, but the tempestuous evening was dark,
and it was night before Constable Brown, with a posse of neighbours on
foot and horseback, reached the ditch. Herein they found the corpse of a
man lying face downwards, the feet upwards hung upon the brambles; thus
half suspended he lay, and the point of a sword stuck out of his back,
through his black camlet coat.** By the lights at the inn, the body was
identified as that of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, a Justice of the Peace
for Westminster, who had been missing since Saturday October 12. It is
an undeniable fact that, between two and three o’clock, before the
body was discovered and identified, Dr. Lloyd, Dean of St. Asaph’s,
and Bishop Burnet, had heard that Godfrey had been found in Leicester
Fields, with his own sword in his body. Dr. Lloyd mentioned his
knowledge in the funeral sermon of the dead magistrate. He had the story
from a Mr. Angus, a clergyman, who had it from ‘a young man in a grey
coat,’ in a bookseller’s shop near St. Paul’s, about two o’clock in the
afternoon. Angus hurried to tell Bishop Burnet, who sent him on to Dr.
Lloyd.*** Either the young man in the grey coat knew too much, or a mere
rumour, based on a conjecture that Godfrey had fallen on his own sword,
proved to be accurate by accident; a point to be remembered. According
to Roger Frith, at two o’clock he heard Salvetti, the ambassador of the
Duke of Tuscany, say: ‘Sir E. Godfrey is dead... the young Jesuits are
grown desperate; the old ones would do no such thing.’ This again may
have been a mere guess by Salvetti.****
*Pollock, Popish Plot, pp. 95, 96.
**Brown in Brief History, iii. pp. 212-215, 222.
***L’Estrange, Brief History, iii. pp. 87-89.
****Lords’ MSS. p. 48, October 24.
In the circumstances of the finding of the body it would have been
correct for Constable Brown to leave it under a guard till daylight and
the arrival of surgical witnesses, but the night was threatening, and
Brown ordered the body to be lifted; he dragged out the sword with
difficulty, and had the dead man carried to the White House Inn. There,
under the candles, the dead man, as we said, was recognised for Sir
Edmund Berry Godfrey, a very well-known justice of the peace and wood
and coal dealer. All this occurred on Thursday, October 17, and
Sir Edmund had not been seen by honest men and thoroughly credible
witnesses, at least, since one o’clock on Saturday, October 12. Then he
was observed near his house in Green Lane, Strand, but into his house he
did not go.
Who, then, killed Sir Edmund?
The question has never been answered, though three guiltless men were
later hanged for the murder. Every conceivable theory has been tried;
the latest is that of Mr. Pollock: Godfrey was slain by ‘the Queen’s
confessor,’ Le Fevre, ‘a Jesuit,’ and some other Jesuits, with lay
assistance.* I have found no proof that Le Fevre was either a Jesuit or
confessor of the Queen.
*Pollock, The Popish Plot, Duckworth, London, 1903.
As David Hume says, the truth might probably have been discovered, had
proper measures been taken at the moment. But a little mob of horse and
foot had trampled round the ditch in the dark, disturbing the original
traces. The coroner’s jury, which sat long and late, on October 18 and
19, was advised by two surgeons, who probably, like the rest of the
world, were biassed by the belief that Godfrey had been slain ‘by the
bloody Papists.’ In the reign of mad terror which followed, every one
was apt to accommodate his evidence, naturally, to that belief. If they
did not, then, like the two original finders, Bromwell and Walters, they
might be thrown, heavily ironed, into Newgate.*
*Lords’ MSS. P. 47, note 1.
But when the Popish Plot was exploded, and Charles II. was firm on his
throne, still more under James II., every one was apt to be biassed in
the opposite direction, and to throw the guilt on the fallen party
of Oates, Bedloe, Dugdale, and the other deeply perjured and infamous
informers. Thus both the evidence of 1678-1680, and that collected in
1684-1687, by Sir Roger L’Estrange, J.P. (who took great trouble and was
allowed access to the manuscript documents of the earlier inquiries),
must be regarded with suspicion.*
*L’Estrange, Brief History of the Times, London, 1687.
The first question is cui bono? who had an interest in Godfrey’s death?
Three parties had an interest, first, the Catholics (IF Godfrey knew
their secrets); next, the managers of the great Whig conspiracy in
favour of the authenticity of Oates’s Popish Plot; last, Godfrey
himself, who was of an hereditary melancholy (his father had suicidal
tendencies), and who was involved in a quandary whence he could scarcely
hope to extricate himself with life and honour.
Of the circumstances of Godfrey’s quandary an account is to follow. But,
meanwhile, the theory of Godfrey’s suicide (though Danby is said to have
accepted it) was rejected, probably with good reason (despite the doubts
of L’Estrange, Hume, Sir George Sitwell, and others), by the coroner’s
jury.*
*Sitwell, The First Whig, Sacheverell.
Privately printed, 1894, Sir George’s book--a most interesting volume,
based on public and private papers--unluckily is introuvable. Some years
have passed since I read a copy which he kindly lent me.
The evidence which determined the verdict of murder was that of two
surgeons. They found that the body had been severely bruised, on
the chest, by kicks, blows of a blunt weapon, or by men’s knees. A
sword-thrust had been dealt, but had slipped on a rib; Godfrey’s own
sword had then been passed through the left pap, and out at the back.
There was said to be no trace of the shedding of fresh living blood on
the clothes of Godfrey, or about the ditch. What blood appeared was old,
the surgeons averred, and malodorous, and flowed after the extraction of
the sword.
L’Estrange (1687) argues at great length, but on evidence collected
later, and given under the Anti-Plot bias, that there was much more
‘bloud’ than was allowed for at the inquest. But the early evidence
ought to be best. Again, the surgeons declared that Godfrey had been
strangled with a cloth (as the jury found), and his neck dislocated.
Bishop Burnet, who viewed the body, writes (long after the event):
‘A mark was all round his neck, an inch broad, which showed he was
strangled.... And his neck was broken. All this I saw.’*
*Burnet, History of his own Time, ii. p. 741. 1725.
L’Estrange argued that the neck was not broken (giving an example of a
similar error in the case of a dead child), and that the mark round the
neck was caused by the tightness of the collar and the flow of blood
to the neck, the body lying head downwards. In favour of this view
he produced one surgeon’s opinion. He also declares that Godfrey’s
brothers, for excellent reasons of their own, refused to allow a
thorough post-mortem examination. ‘None of them had ever been opened,’
they said. Their true motive was that, if Godfrey were a suicide,
his estate would be forfeited to the Crown, a point on which they
undoubtedly showed great anxiety.
Evidence was also given to prove that, on Tuesday and Wednesday, October
15 and 16, Godfrey’s body was not in the ditch. On Tuesday Mr. Forsett,
on Wednesday Mr. Harwood had taken Mr. Forsett’s harriers over the
ground, in pursuit of the legendary hare. They had seen no cane or
scabbard; the dogs had found no corpse. L’Estrange replied that, as to
the cane, the men could not see it if they were on the further side of
the bramble-covered ditch. As to the dogs, they later hunted a wood
in which a dead body lay for six weeks before it was found. L’Estrange
discovered witnesses who had seen Godfrey in St. Martin’s Lane on the
fatal Saturday, asking his way to Paddington Woods, others who had seen
him there or met him returning thence. Again, either he or ‘the Devil in
his clothes’ was seen near the ditch on Saturday afternoon. Again,
his clerk, Moore, was seen hunting the fields near the ditch, for his
master, on the Monday afternoon. Hence L’Estrange argued that Godfrey
went to Paddington Woods, on Saturday morning, to look for a convenient
place of suicide: that he could not screw his courage to the sticking
place; that he wandered home, did not enter his house, roamed out again,
and, near Primrose Hill, found the ditch and ‘the sticking place.’ His
rambles, said L’Estrange, could neither have been taken for business nor
pleasure. This is true, if Godfrey actually took the rambles, but the
evidence was not adduced till several years later; in 1678 the witnesses
would have been in great danger. Still, if we accept L’Estrange’s
witnesses for Godfrey’s trip to Paddington and return, perhaps we ought
not to reject the rest.*
*Brief History, iii. pp. 252, 300, 174, 175; State Trials, viii. pp.
1387, 1392, 1393, 1359-1389.
On the whole, it seems that the evidence for murder, not suicide, is
much the better, though even here absolute certainty is not attained.
Granting Godfrey’s constitutional hereditary melancholy, and the double
quandary in which he stood, he certainly had motives for suicide. He was
a man of humanity and courage, had bravely faced the Plague in London,
had withstood the Court boldly on a private matter (serving a writ, as
Justice, on the King’s physician who owed him money in his capacity as a
coal dealer), and he was lenient in applying the laws against Dissenters
and Catholics.
To be lenient was well; but Godfrey’s singular penchant for Jesuits, and
especially for the chief Catholic intriguer in England, was probably the
ultimate cause of his death, whether inflicted by his own hand or those
of others.
2.
We now study Godfrey’s quandary. On June 23, 1678, the infamous
miscreant Titus Oates had been expelled from the Jesuit College of St.
Omer’s, in France. There he may readily have learned that the usual
triennial ‘consult’ of English Jesuits was to be held in London on April
24, but WHERE it was held, namely in the Duke of York’s chambers in
St. James’s Palace, Oates did not know, or did not say. The Duke, by
permitting the Jesuits to assemble in his house, had been technically
guilty of treason in ‘harbouring’ Jesuits, certainly a secret of great
importance, as he was the head and hope of the Catholic cause, and the
butt of the Whigs, who were eager to exclude him from the succession.
Oates had scraps of other genuine news. He returned to London after
his expulsion from St. Omer’s, was treated with incautious kindness by
Jesuits there, and, with Tonge, constructed his monstrous fable of a
Popish plot to kill the King and massacre the Protestant public.
In August, Charles was apprised of the plot, as was Danby, the Lord
Treasurer; the Duke of York also knew, how much he knew is uncertain.
The myth was little esteemed by the King.
On September 6, Oates went to Godfrey, and swore before him, as a
magistrate, to the truth of a written deposition, as to treason. But
Godfrey was not then allowed to read the paper, nor was it left in his
hands; the King, he was told, had a copy.* The thing might have passed
off, but, as King James II. himself writes, he (being then Duke of York)
‘press’d the King and Lord Treasurer several times that the letters’
(letters forged by Oates) ‘might be produced and read, and the business
examined into at the Committee of Foreign Affairs.’** Mr. Pollock calls
the Duke’s conduct tactless. Like Charles I., in the mystery of ‘the
Incident,’ he knew himself guiltless, and demanded an inquiry.
*Kirkby, Complete Narrative, pp. 2, 3, cited by Mr. Pollock. At the
time, it was believed that Godfrey saw the depositions.
**Clarke’s Life
of James II. i. p. 518. Cited from the King’s original Memoirs.
On September 28, Oates was to appear before the Council. Earlier on that
day he again visited Godfrey, handed to him a copy of his deposition,
took oath to its truth, and carried another copy to Whitehall. As we
shall see, Oates probably adopted this course by advice of one of the
King’s ministers, Danby or another. Oates was now examined before the
King, who detected him in perjury. But he accused Coleman, the secretary
of the Duchess of York, of treasonable correspondence with La Chaise,
the confessor of Louis XIV.: he also said that, on April 24, he himself
was present at the Jesuit ‘consult’ in the White Horse Tavern, Strand,
where they decided to murder the King! This was a lie, but they HAD met
on ordinary business of the Society, on April 24, at the palace of the
Duke of York. Had the Jesuits, when tried, proved this, they would not
have saved their lives, and Oates would merely have sworn that they met
AGAIN, at the White Horse.
Godfrey, having Oates’s paper before him, now knew that Coleman was
accused. Godfrey was very intimate with many Jesuits, says Warner, who
was one of them, in his manuscript history.* With Coleman, certainly
a dangerous intriguer, Godfrey was so familiar that ‘it was the form
arranged between them for use when Godfrey was in company and Coleman
wished to see him,’ that Coleman should be announced under the name of
Mr. Clarke.**
* Pollock, p. 91, note 1.
**Ibid. p. 151, note 3. Welden’s evidence before the Lords’ Committee,
House of Lords MSS., p. 48. Mr. Pollock rather overstates the case. We
cannot be certain, from Welden’s words, that Coleman habitually used the
name ‘Clarke’ on such occasions.
It is extraordinary enough to find a rigid British magistrate engaged
in clandestine dealings with an intriguer like Coleman, who, for the
purpose, receives a cant name. If that fact came out in the inquiry into
the plot, Godfrey’s doom was dight, the general frenzy would make men
cry for his blood. But yet more extraordinary was Godfrey’s conduct on
September 28. No sooner had he Oates’s confession, accusing Coleman, in
his hands, than he sent for the accused. Coleman went to the house of
a Mr. (or Colonel) Welden, a friend of Godfrey’s, and to Godfrey it was
announced that ‘one Clarke’ wished to see him there. ‘When they were
together at my house they were reading papers,’ said Welden later, in
evidence.* It cannot be doubted that, after studying Oates’s deposition,
Godfrey’s first care was to give Coleman full warning. James II. tells
us this himself, in his memoirs. ‘Coleman being known to depend on the
Duke, Sir Edmund Bury (sic) Godfrey made choice of him, to send to his
Highness an account of Oates’s and Tongue’s depositions as soon as he
had taken them,’ that is, on September 28.** Apparently the Duke had
not the precise details of Oates’s charges, as they now existed, earlier
than September 28, when they were sent to him by Godfrey.
*See previous note (Pollock, p. 151, note 3.)
**Life of James II. i, p. 534.
It is Mr. Pollock’s argument that, when Godfrey and Coleman went over
the Oates papers, Coleman would prove Oates’s perjury, and would to this
end let out that, on April 24, the Jesuits met, not as Oates swore, at a
tavern, but at the Duke of York’s house, a secret fatal to the Duke and
the Catholic cause. The Jesuits then slew Godfrey to keep the secret
safe.*
*Pollock, p. 153.
Now, first, I cannot easily believe that Coleman would blab this secret
(quite unnecessarily, for this proof of Oates’s perjury could not be,
and was not, publicly adduced), unless Godfrey was already deep in the
Catholic intrigues. He may have been, judging by his relations with
Coleman. If Godfrey was not himself engaged in Catholic intrigues,
Coleman need only tell him that Oates was not in England in April, and
could not have been, as he swore he was, at the ‘consult.’ Next, Godfrey
was not the man (as Mr. Pollock supposes) to reveal his knowledge to the
world, from a sense of duty, even if the Court ‘stifled the plot.’ Mr.
Pollock says: ‘Godfrey was, by virtue of his position as justice of
the peace, a Government official.... Sooner or later he would certainly
reveal it.... The secret... had come into the hands of just one of the
men who could not afford, even if he might wish, to retain it.’* Mr.
Pollock may conceive, though I do not find him saying so, that Godfrey
communicated Oates’s charges to Coleman merely for the purpose of
‘pumping’ him and surprising some secret. If so he acted foolishly.
*Pollock, p. 154.
In fact, Godfrey was already ‘stifling the plot.’ A Government official,
he was putting Coleman in a posture to fly, and to burn his papers; had
he burned all of them, the plot was effectually stifled. Next, Godfrey
could not reveal the secret without revealing his own misprision of
treason. He would be asked ‘how he knew the secret.’ Godfrey’s lips were
thus sealed; he had neither the wish nor the power to speak out, and
so his knowledge of the secret, if he knew it, was innocuous to the
Jesuits. ‘What is it nearer?’ Coleman was reported, by a perjured
informer, to have asked.*
*State Trials, vii. 1319. Trial of Lord Stafford, 1680.
To this point I return later. Meanwhile, let it be granted that Godfrey
knew the secret from Coleman, and that, though, since Godfrey could
not speak without self-betrayal--though it was ‘no nearer’--still the
Jesuits thought well to mak sikker and slay him.
Still, what is the evidence that Godfrey had a mortal secret? Mr.
Pollock gives it thus: ‘He had told Mr. Wynnel that he was master of
a dangerous secret, which would be fatal to him. “Oates,” he said, “is
sworn and is perjured.”’ * These sentences are not thus collocated in
the original. The secret was not, as from Mr. Pollock’s arrangement it
appears to be, that Oates was perjured.
*Pollock, p. 150.
The danger lay, not in knowledge that Oates was perjured--all the
Council knew the King to have discovered that. ‘Many believed it,’ says
Mr. Pollock. ‘It was not an uncommon thing to say.’* The true peril, on
Mr. Pollock’s theory, was Godfrey’s possession of PROOF that Oates was
perjured, that proof involving the secret of the Jesuit ‘consult’ of
April 14, AT THE DUKE OF YORK’S HOUSE. But, by a singular oversight,
Mr. Pollock quotes only part of what Godfrey said to Wynell (or Wynnel)
about his secret. He does not give the whole of the sentence uttered by
Wynell. The secret, of which Godfrey was master, on the only evidence,
Wynell’s, had nothing to do with the Jesuit meeting of April 24. Wynell
is one of L’Estrange’s later witnesses. His words are:
Godfrey: ‘The (Catholic) Lords are as innocent as you or I. Coleman will
die, but not the Lords.’
Wynell: ‘If so, where are we then?’
Godfrey: ‘Oates is sworn and is perjured.’
* * *
‘Upon Wynell’s asking Sir Edmund some time why he was so melancholy, his
answer has been, “he was melancholy because he was master of a dangerous
secret that would be fatal to him, THAT HIS SECURITY WAS OATE’S
DEPOSITION, THAT THE SAID OATES HAD FIRST DECLARED IT TO A PUBLIC
MINISTER, AND SECONDLY THAT HE CAME TO SIR EDMUND BY HIS (the
Minister’s) DIRECTION.” **
*Pollock, p. 152.
**L’Estrange, part iii. p. 187.
We must accept all of Mr. Wynell’s statement or none; we cannot accept,
like Mr. Pollock, only Godfrey’s confession of owning a dangerous
secret, without Godfrey’s explanation of the nature of the danger.
Against THAT danger (his knowing and taking no action upon what Oates
had deposed) Godfrey’s ‘security’ was Oates’s other deposition, that his
information was already in the Minister’s hands, and that he had come to
Godfrey by the Minister’s orders. The invidiousness of knowing and
not acting on Oates’s ‘dangerous secret,’ Godfrey hoped, fell on the
Minister rather than on himself. And it did fall on Danby, who was later
accused of treason on this very ground, among others. Such is Wynell’s
evidence, true or false. C’est a prendre ou a laisser in bulk, and in
bulk is of no value to Mr. Pollock’s argument.
That Godfrey was in great fear after taking Oates’s deposition, and
dealing with Coleman, is abundantly attested. But of what was he afraid,
and of whom? L’Estrange says, of being made actual party to the plot,
and not of ‘bare misprision’ only, the misprision of not acting on
Oates’s information.* It is to prove this point that L’Estrange cites
Wynell as quoted above. Bishop Burnet reports that, to him, Godfrey said
‘that he believed he himself should be knocked on the head.’** Knocked
on the head by whom? By a frightened Protestant mob, or by Catholic
conspirators? To Mr. Robinson, an old friend, he said, ‘I do not fear
them if they come fairly, and I shall not part with my life tamely.’
Qu’ils viennent! as Tartarin said, but who are ‘they’? Godfrey said that
he had ‘taken the depositions very unwillingly, and would fain have
had it done by others.... I think I shall have little thanks for my
pains.... Upon my conscience I believe I shall be the first martyr.’***
He could not expect thanks from the Catholics: it was from the frenzied
Protestants that he expected ‘little thanks.’
*L’Estrange, iii. p. 187.
**Burnet, ii. p. 740.
***State Trials, vii. pp. 168, 169.
Oates swore, and, for once, is corroborated, that Godfrey complained ‘of
receiving affronts from some great persons (whose names I name not now)
for being so zealous in this business.’ If Oates, by ‘great persons,’
means the Duke of York, it was in the Duke’s own cause that Godfrey had
been ‘zealous,’ sending him warning by Coleman. Oates added that others
threatened to complain to Parliament, which was to meet on October 21,
that Godfrey had been ‘too remiss.’ Oates was a liar, but Godfrey, in
any case, was between the Devil and the deep sea. As early as October
24, Mr. Mulys attested, before the Lords, Godfrey’s remark, ‘he had
been blamed by some great men for not having done his duty, and by
other great men for having done too much.’ Mulys corroborates Oates.*
If Godfrey knew a secret dangerous to the Jesuits (which, later, was a
current theory), he might be by them silenced for ever. If his conduct,
being complained of, was examined into by Parliament, misprision of
treason was the lowest at which his offence could be rated. Never was
magistrate in such a quandary. But we do not know, in the state of the
evidence, which of his many perils he feared most, and his possession of
‘a dangerous secret’ (namely, the secret of the consult of April 24) is
a pure hypothesis. It is not warranted, but refuted, by Godfrey’s own
words as reported by Wynell, when, unlike Mr. Pollock, we quote Wynell’s
whole sentence on the subject. (see previous exchange between Godfrey
and Wynell.)
*Lords’ MSS., P. 48.
3.
The theories of Godfrey’s death almost defy enumeration. For suicide,
being a man of melancholic temperament, he had reasons as many and as
good as mortal could desire. That he was murdered for not being active
enough in prosecuting the plot, is most improbable. That he was taken
off by Danby’s orders, for giving Coleman and the Duke of York early
warning, is an absurd idea, for Danby could have had him on THAT score
by ordinary process of law. That he was slain by Oates’s gang, merely to
clinch the fact that a plot there veritably was, is improbable. At the
same time, Godfrey had been calling Oates a perjurer: he KNEW that Oates
was forsworn. This was an unsafe thing for any man to say, but when
the man was the magistrate who had read Oates’s deposition, he invited
danger. Such were the chances that Godfrey risked from the Plot party.
The Catholics, on the other hand, if they were aware that Godfrey
possessed the secret of the Jesuit meeting of April 24, and if they
deemed him too foolish to keep the secret in his own interest, could not
but perceive that to murder him was to play into the hands of the Whigs
by clinching the belief in a Popish plot. Had they been the murderers,
they would probably have taken his money and rings, to give the idea
that he had been attacked and robbed by vulgar villains. If they ‘were
not the damnedest fools’ (thus freely speaks L’Estrange), they would
not have taken deliberate steps to secure the instant discovery of the
corpse. Whoever pitched Godfrey’s body into the bramble-covered
ditch, meant it to be found, for his cane, scabbard, and so on were
deliberately left outside of the ditch. Your wily Jesuit would have
caused the body to disappear, leaving the impression that Godfrey had
merely absconded, as he had the best reasons for doing. On the other
hand, Oates’s gang would not, if they first strangled Godfrey, have run
his own sword through his body, as if he had committed suicide--unless,
indeed, they calculated that this would be a likely step for your wily
Jesuit to take, in the circumstances. Again, an educated ‘Jesuit,’ like
Le Fevre, ‘the Queen’s confessor,’ would know that the sword trick was
futile; even a plain man, let alone a surgeon, could detect a wound
inflicted on a corpse four or five days old.
Two other theories existed, first, that Godfrey hanged himself, and that
his brothers and heirs did the sword trick, to suggest that he had not
committed suicide by strangulation, but had been set on and stabbed with
his own sword. In that case, of course, the brothers would have removed
his rings and money, to prove that he had been robbed. The other theory,
plausible enough, held that Godfrey was killed by Catholics, NOT because
he took Oates’s deposition (which he was bound to do), but because
he officiously examined a number of persons to make discoveries. The
Attorney-General at the trial of Godfrey’s alleged murderers (February
1679), declared that Sir Edmund had taken such examinations: ‘we have
proof that he had some... perhaps some more than are now extant’ * This
theory, then, held that he was taken off to prevent his pursuing his
zealous course, and to seize the depositions which he had already
taken. When this was stated to Charles II., on November 7, 1678, by the
perjured Bedloe, the King naturally remarked: ‘The parties were still
alive’ (the deponents) ‘to give the informations.’ Bedloe answered, that
the papers were to be seized ‘in hopes the second informations taken
from the parties would not have agreed with the first, and so the thing
would have been disproved.’** This was monstrously absurd, for the
slayers of Godfrey could not have produced the documents of which they
had robbed him.
*State Trials, vii. p. 163.
**Pollock, p. 385.
The theory that Sir Edmund was killed because Coleman had told him too
many secrets did not come to general knowledge till the trial of
Lord Stafford in 1680. The hypothesis--Godfrey slain because, through
Coleman, he knew too many Catholic secrets--is practically that of Mr.
Pollock. It certainly does supply a motive for Godfrey’s assassination.
Hot-headed Catholics who knew, or suspected, that Godfrey knew too much,
MAY have killed him for that reason, or for the purpose of seizing his
papers, but it is improbable that Catholics of education, well aware
that, if he blabbed, Godfrey must ruin himself, would have put their
hands into his blood, on the mere chance that, if left alive, he might
betray both himself and them.
4.
It is now necessary to turn backward a little and see what occurred
immediately after the meeting of Coleman and Godfrey on September 28.
On that day, Oates gave his lying evidence before the Council: he was
allowed to go on a Jesuit drive, with warrants and officers; he caught
several of the most important Jesuits. On September 29, the King heard
his tale, and called him a ‘lying knave.’ None the less he was sent on
another drive, and, says Mr. Pollock, ‘before dawn most the Jesuits of
eminence in London lay in gaol.’ But Le Fevre, ‘the Queen’s confessor,’
and the other ‘Jesuits’ whom Mr. Pollock suspects of Godfrey’s murder,
were not taken. Is it likely (it is, of course, possible) that they
stayed on in town, and killed Godfrey twelve days later?
Meanwhile Coleman, thanks to Godfrey’s warning, had most of September
28, the night of that day, and September 29, wherein to burn his papers
and abscond. He did neither; if he destroyed some papers, he left others
in his rooms, letters which were quite good enough to hang him for high
treason, as the law stood. Apparently Coleman did not understand his
danger. On Sunday night, September 29, a warrant for his apprehension
was issued, and for the seizure of his papers. ‘He came voluntarily in
on Monday morning,’ having heard of the warrant. This is not the conduct
of a man who knows himself guilty. He met the charges with disdain,
and made so good a case that, instead of being sent to Newgate, he was
merely entrusted to a messenger, who was told ‘to be very civil to Mr.
Coleman.’
Charles II. went to the Newmarket Autumn Meeting, Coleman’s papers were
examined, and ‘sounded so strange to the Lords’ that they sent him to
Newgate (October 1). The papers proved that Coleman, years before, had
corresponded (as Oates had sworn) with the confessor of Louis XIV. and
had incurred the technical guilt of treason. Either Coleman did not
understand the law and the measure of his offence (as seems probable),
or he thought his papers safely hidden. But the heather was on fire. The
belief in Oates’s impossible Plot blazed up, ‘hell was let loose’.*
*State Trials, vii. p. 29.
Coleman had thought himself safe, says James II., then Duke of York.
‘The Duke perceiving’ (from Godfrey’s information of September 28)
‘Oates had named Coleman, bade him look to himself, for he was sure to
find no favour, and therefore, if he had any papers that might hurt him,
to secure them immediately; but he, apprehending no danger, let them
be seized, however kept close himself, and sent to advise with the Duke
whether he should deliver himself up or not. The Duke replyd, “He knew
best what was in his papers; if they contain’d any expression which
could be wrested to an ill sence, he had best not appear, otherwise
the surrendering himself would be an argument of innocency.” He did
accordingly,’ and was condemned in November, and hanged.*
*Life of James II., i. p. 534.
King James’s tale agrees with the facts of Coleman’s surrender. ‘He came
in voluntarily.’ He did not appreciate the resources of civilisation at
the service of the English law of treason: he had dabbled in intrigue
without taking counsel’s advice, and knowing for certain that Oates
was an inconsistent liar, Coleman took his chance with a light heart.
However, not only did some of his letters bring him (though he could
not understand the fact) within the elastic law of treason; but Oates’s
evidence was accepted when conspicuously false; Coleman was not
allowed to produce his diary and prove an alibi as to one of Oates’s
accusations, and a new witness, Bedloe, a perjurer who rivalled Oates,
had sprung up out of the filth of London streets. So Coleman swung for
it, as Godfrey, according to Wynell, had prophesied that he would.
Coleman’s imprisonment began twelve days before Godfrey’s disappearance.
At Coleman’s trial, late in November, a mere guess was given that
Godfrey was slain to prevent him (a Protestant martyr) from blabbing
Catholic secrets. This cause of Godfrey’s taking off was not alleged by
Bedloe. This man, a notorious cosmopolitan rogue, who had swindled his
way through France and Spain, was first heard of in the Godfrey case at
the end of October. He wrote to the Secretaries of State from Bristol
(L’Estrange says from Newbury on his way to Bristol), offering
information, as pardon and reward had been promised to contrite
accomplices in the murder. He came to town, and, on November 7, gave
evidence before the King. Bedloe gave himself out as a Jesuit agent;
concerning the Plot he added monstrous inventions to those of Oates.
‘As to Sir Edmund Godfrey; was promised 2,000 guineas to be in it by
Le Fere’ (Le Fevre, ‘the Queen’s confessor),’ [by] ‘my Lord Bellasis
gentleman, AND THE YOUNGEST OF THE WAITERS IN THE QUEENE’S CHAPEL, IN A
PURPLE GOWN, and to keep the people orderly.’*
*See Pollock, pp. 384, 387. The report is from Secretary Coventry’s
MSS., at Longleat. The evidence as to Bedloe’s deposition before the
King (November 7) is in a confused state. Mr. Pollock prints (pp. 383,
384, cf. p. 110) a document from ‘Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 11058, f. 244.’
This is also given, with the same erroneous reference, by Mr. Foley, in
Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, vol. v. p. 30,
note. The right reference is 11055. The document is quite erroneously
printed, with variations in error, by Mr. Foley and Mr. Pollock. Bedloe
really said that Godfrey was lured into Somerset House Yard, not into
‘some house yard’ (Foley), or ‘into a house yard’ (Pollock). Bedloe, so
far, agreed with Prance, but, in another set of notes on his deposition
(Longleat MSS., Coventry Papers, xi. 272-274, Pollock, 384-387), he
made Somerset House the scene of the murder. There are other errors. Mr.
Pollock and Mr. Foley make Bedloe accuse Father Eveley, S.J., in whom
I naturally recognised Father Evers or Every, who was then at Tixall in
Staffordshire. The name in the MS. is ‘Welch,’ not Eveley. The MS. was
manifestly written not before September 12. It does not appear that
Bedloe, on November 7, knew the plot as invented by Oates, on which
compare Mr. Pollock, p. 110, who thinks that ‘it is quite possible that
Charles II. deceived him,’ Bishop Burnet, ‘intentionally,’ on this head
(Burnet, ii. 745-746, 1725). By printing ‘he acquainted’ instead of ‘he
acquainteth the Lords,’ in the British Museum MS., and by taking the
document, apparently, to be of November 7, Mr. Pollock has been led
to an incorrect conclusion. I am obliged to Father Gerard, S.J., for a
correct transcript of the British Museum MS.; see also Note iii., ‘The
Jesuit Murderers,’ at the end of this chapter, and Father Gerard’s The
Popish Plot and its Latest Historian (Longman’s, 1903).
Bedloe here asserts distinctly that one accomplice was an official of
the Queen’s chapel, in her residence, Somerset House: a kind of verger,
in a purple gown. This is highly important, for the man whom he later
pretended to recognise as this accomplice was not a ‘waiter,’ did not
‘wear a purple gown;’ and, by his own account, ‘was not in the chapel
once a month.’ Bedloe’s recognition of him, therefore, was worthless. He
said that Godfrey was smothered with a pillow, or two pillows, in a room
in Somerset House, for the purpose of securing ‘the examinations’ that
Godfrey had taken. ‘Coleman and Lord Bellasis advised to destroy him.’
His informant was Le Fevre. One Walsh (a ‘Jesuit’), Le Fevre, Lord
Bellasis’s man, and ‘the chapel keeper’ did the deed. The chapel keeper
carried him’ (Godfrey) ‘off.’ ‘HE DID NOT SEE HIM’ (Godfrey) ‘AFTER HE
WAS DEAD.’
On the following day Bedloe told his tale at the bar of the House of
Lords. He now, contradicting himself, swore THAT HE SAW GODFREY’S DEAD
BODY IN SOMERSET HOUSE. He was offered 2,000 guineas to help to carry
him off. This was done by chairmen, ‘retainers to Somerset House,’ on
Monday night (October 14).*
*Pollock, p. 387, Lords’ Journals, xiii. p. 343.
On that night, Bedloe saw Samuel Atkins, Mr. Pepys’s clerk, beside the
corpse, by the light of a dark lantern. Atkins had an alibi, so Bedloe
shuffled, and would not swear to him.
On November 14, before the Lords’ Committee, Bedloe again gave evidence.
The 2,100 pounds were now 4,000 pounds offered to Bedloe, by Le Fevre,
early in October, to kill a man. The attendant in the Queen’s chapel
was at the scene (a pure figment) of the corpse exposed under the dark
lantern. The motive of the murder was to seize Godfrey’s examinations,
which he said he had sent to Whitehall. At a trial which followed in
February 1679, Mr. Robinson, who had known Godfrey for some forty years,
deposed that he had said to him, ‘I understand you have taken several
examinations.’ ‘Truly,’ said he, ‘I have.’ ‘Pray, Sir, have you the
examinations about you, will you please to let me see them?’ ‘No, I have
them not, I delivered them to a person of quality.’*
*State Trials, vii. 168.
This person of quality was not the Duke of York, for it may be noted
that, on the day before his disappearance, Godfrey had, in fact,
received back from the Lord Chief Justice the original copy of Oates’s
depositions. This copy was found in his house, after his death, and
handed over by his brother to the Government.* To get the examinations
was always the motive of the murder, with Bedloe. The hour of Godfrey’s
death was now 2 P.M.; now 3, or 4, or 5 P.M., on October 12. The body
was hidden in various rooms of Somerset House, or under the high altar
in the Queen’s Chapel. The discrepancies never affected the faith given
to Bedloe.
*Lords’ MSS., Hist. MSS. Commission Report, xi. Appendix, part ii.,
pp. 2,3.
At the end of December came in a new accomplice-witness. This was
an Irishman, Miles Prance, a silversmith, who had a business among
Catholics, and worked for the Queen’s Chapel. Unlike all the other
informers, Prance had hitherto been an ordinary fellow enough, with a
wife and family, not a swindling debauchee. He was arrested on December
21, on information given by John Wren, a lodger of his, with whom he had
quarrelled. Wren had noticed that Prance lay out of his own house while
Godfrey was missing, which Prance admitted to be true.*
*Op. cit. p. 51. Prance both said, and denied, that he slept out
while Sir Edmund was missing. He was flurried and self-contradictory.
Bedloe, passing through a room in the House of Commons, saw Prance in
custody, and at once pretended to recognise in him the ‘chapel keeper,’
‘under waiter,’ or ‘man in the purple gown,’ whom he had seen by the
light of a dark lantern, beside Godfrey’s body, in a room of Somerset
House, on October 14. ‘There was very little light’ on that occasion,
Bedloe had said, and he finally refused, we saw, to swear to Atkins,
who had an alibi. But, as to Prance, he said: ‘This is one of the rogues
that I saw with a dark lantern about the body of Sir Edmund, but he was
then in a periwig.’* The periwig was introduced in case Prance had an
alibi: Oates had used the same ‘hedge,’ ‘a periwig doth disguise a man
very much,’ in Coleman’s case.**
*L’Estrange, iii. pp. 52, 53, 65.
**State Trials, vii. 27.
What was Bedloe’s recognition of Prance worth? Manifestly nothing! He
had probably seen Prance (not as a ‘waiter’) in the Queen’s Chapel. Now
he found him in custody. Cautious as regards Atkins, six weeks earlier,
Bedloe was emboldened now by a train of successes. He had sworn away
Coleman’s life. His self-contradictions had been blindly swallowed. If
Prance could prove an alibi, what was that to Bedloe? The light of the
dark lantern had been very bad; the rogue, under that light, had worn a
periwig, which ‘doth disguise a man very much.’ Bedloe could safely say
that he had made an innocent error. Much worse blunders had not impaired
his credit; later he made much worse blunders, undetected. He saw his
chance and took it.
Prance, who denied everything, was hurried to Newgate, and thrown,
without bed or covering, into the freezing ‘condemned hole,’ where he
lay perishing of cold through the night of December 21, December 22,
and the night of that day. On December 23, he offered, no wonder, to
confess. He was examined by the Lords, and (December 24) by the Council.
Prance knew, all the world knew, the details about Godfrey’s bruises;
the state of his neck, and the sword-thrusts. He knew that Bedloe had
located the murder in Somerset House. As proclamations for the men
accused by Bedloe had long been out, he MAY have guessed that Le Fevre,
Walsh, and Pritchard were wanted for Godfrey’s murder, and had been
denounced by Bedloe. But this is highly improbable, for nothing about
Godfrey’s murder is hinted at in the proclamation for Le Fevre, Walsh,
and Pritchard.* We have no reason, then, to suppose that Prance knew
who the men were that Bedloe had accused; consequently he had to select
other victims, innocent men of his acquaintance. But, as a tradesman of
the Queen, Prance knew her residence, Somerset House, the courts, outer
stairs, passages, and so on. He knew that Bedloe professed to have
recognised him there in the scene of the dark lantern.
*Lords’ Journals, xiii. p. 346; Lords’ MSS., p. 59.
Prance had thus all the materials of a confession ready made, but not of
a confession identical with Bedloe’s. He was ‘one of the most acute
and audacious of the Jesuit agents,’ says Mr. Pollock.* Yet Mr. Pollock
argues that for Prance to tell the tale which he did tell, in his
circumstances of cold and terror, required a most improbable ‘wealth
of mental equipment,’ ‘phenomenal powers of memory, imagination, and
coolness,’ if the tale was false.** Therefore Prance’s story of the
murder was true, except in the details as to the men whom he accused.
On December 24, he was taken to the places which he described (certainly
lying in his tale), and preserved consistency, though, after long
search, he could not find one of the rooms in which he said that the
corpse was laid.***
*Pollock, p.166.
**Ibid. p. 146.
***Lords’ Journals, xii. pp. 436-438.
As Prance, by Mr. Pollock’s theory, was one of the most acute of Jesuit
agents, and as he had all the materials, and all the knowledge necessary
for a confession, he had, obviously, no difficulty in making up his
evidence. Even by Mr. Pollock’s showing, he was cool and intellectual
enough; for, on that showing, he adapted into his narrative, very
subtly, circumstances which were entirely false. If, as Mr. Pollock
holds, Prance was astute enough to make a consistent patchwork of fact
and lie, how can it be argued that, with the information at his command,
he could not invent a complete fiction?
Again, Prance, by misstating dates wildly, hoped, says Mr. Pollock, to
escape as a mere liar.* But, when Prance varied in almost every detail
of time, place, motive, and person from Bedloe, Mr. Pollock does not see
that his own explanation holds for the variations. If Prance wished
to escape as a babbling liar, he could not do better than contradict
Bedloe. He DID, but the Protestant conscience swallowed the
contradictions. But again, if Prance did not know the details of
Bedloe’s confession, how could he possibly agree with it?
*Pollock, p. 160.
The most essential point of difference was that Bedloe accused
‘Jesuits,’ Le Fevre, Walsh, and Pritchard, who had got clean away.
Prance accused two priests, who escaped, and three hangers on of
Somerset House, Hill, Berry (the porter), and Green. All three were
hanged, and all three confessedly were innocent. Mr. Pollock reasons
that Prance, if guilty (and he believes him guilty), ‘must have known
the real authors’ of the crime, that is, the Jesuits accused by Bedloe.
‘He must have accused the innocent, not from necessity, but from choice,
and in order to conceal the guilty.’ ‘He knew Bedloe to have exposed the
real murderers, and... he wished to shield them.’* How did he know whom
Bedloe had exposed? How could he even know the exact spot, a room in
Somerset House, where Bedloe placed the murder? Prance placed it in
Somerset YARD.
*Pollock, p. 148.
It is just as easy to argue, on Mr. Pollock’s other line, that Prance
varied from Bedloe in order that the inconsistencies might prove his
own falsehood. But we have no reason to suppose that Prance did know
the details of Bedloe’s confession, as to the motive of the murder,
the hour, the exact spot, and the names of the criminals. Later he told
L’Estrange a palpable lie: Bedloe’s confession had been shown to him
before he made his own. If that were true, he purposely contradicted
Bedloe in detail. But Mr. Pollock rejects the myth. Then how did Prance
know the details given by Bedloe?* Ignorant of Bedloe’s version, except
in two or three points, Prance could not but contradict it. He thus
could not accuse Bedloe’s Jesuits. He did not name other men, as Mr.
Pollock holds, to shield the Jesuits. Practically they did not need
to be shielded. Jesuits with seven weeks’ start of the law were safe
enough. Even if they were caught, were guilty, and had the truth
extracted from them, involving Prance, the truth about HIM would come
out, whether he now denounced them or not. But he did not know that
Bedloe had denounced them.
*Pollock, pp. 142, 143.
Mr. Pollock’s theory of the relation of Bedloe to Godfrey’s murder is
this: Bedloe had no hand in the murder, and never saw the corpse. The
crime was done in Somerset House, ‘the Queen’s confessor,’ Father Le
Fevre, S.J., having singular facilities for entering, with his friends,
and carrying a dead body out ‘through a private door’--a door not
mentioned by any witnesses, nor proved to exist by the evidence of a
chart. This Le Fevre, with Walsh, lived in the same house as Bedloe.
From them, Bedloe got his information. ‘It is easy to conjecture how he
could have obtained it. Walsh and Le Fevre were absent from their rooms,
for a considerable part of the nights of Saturday and Wednesday, October
12 and 16. Bedloe’s suspicions must have been aroused, and, either by
threats or cajolery, he wormed part of the secret out of his friends.
He obtained a general idea of the way in which the murder had been
committed and of the persons concerned in it. One of these was a
frequenter of the Queen’s chapel whom he knew by sight. He thought him
to be a subordinate official there.’*
*Pollock, pp. 157, 158.
On this amount of evidence Bedloe invented his many contradictions. Why
he did not cleave to the facts imparted to him by his Jesuit friends,
we do not learn. ‘A general idea of the way in which the murder was
committed’ any man could form from the state of Godfrey’s body. There
was no reason why Walsh and Le Fevre ‘should be absent from their rooms
on a considerable part of the night of Saturday 12,’ and so excite
Bedloe’s suspicions, for, on his versions, they slew Godfrey at 2 P.M.,
5 P.M., or any hour between. No proof is given that they were in their
lodgings, or in London, during the fortnight which followed Oates’s
three successful Jesuit drives of September 28-30. In all probability
they had fled from London before Godfrey’s murder. No evidence can I
find that Bedloe’s Jesuits were at their lodgings on October 12-16. They
were not sought for there, but at Somerset House.* Two sisters, named
Salvin, were called before the Lords’ Committee, and deposed that Bedloe
and Le Fevre had twice been at their house when Walsh said mass there.**
*Lords’ Journals, xiii. pp. 343 346.
**Ibid. p. 353.
That is all! Bedloe had some acquaintance with the men he accused; so
had Prance with those he denounced. Prance’s victims were innocent, and
against Bedloe’s there is not, so far, evidence to convict a cat on
for stealing cream. He recognised Prance, therefore he really knew the
murderers--that is all the argument.
Mr. Pollock’s theory reposes on the belief, rejected by L’Estrange, that
the Jesuits ‘were the damnedest fools.’ Suppose them guilty. The first
step of a Jesuit, or of any gentleman, about to commit a deliberate
deeply planned murder, is to secure an alibi. Le Fevre did not, or, when
questioned (on Mr. Pollock’s theory) by Bedloe, he would have put him
off with his alibi. Again, ‘a Jesuit,’ ‘the Queen’s confessor,’ does not
do his murders in the Queen’s house: no gentleman does. But, if Le Fevre
did commit this solecism, he would have told Bedloe a different story;
if he confessed to him at all. These things are elementary.
Prance’s confession, as to the share of Hill, Berry, and Green in the
murder, was admittedly false. On one point he stumbled always: ‘Were
there no guards at the usual places at the time of the carrying on this
work?’ he was asked by one of the Lords on December 24,1678. He mumbled,
‘I did not take notice of any.’* He never, on later occasions, could
answer this question about the sentries. Prance saw no sentries, and
there is nowhere any evidence that the sentries were ever asked whether
they saw either Prance, Le Fevre, or Godfrey, in Somerset House or the
adjacent Somerset Yard, on October 12. They were likely to know both the
Queen’s silversmith and ‘the Queen’s confessor,’ and Godfrey they may
have known. Prance and the sentries had, for each other, the secret of
fern-seed, they walked invisible. This, of itself, is fatal to Prance’s
legend.
*Lords’ Journals, xiii. p. 438.
No sooner had Prance confessed than he withdrew his confession. He
prayed to be taken before the King, knelt, and denied all. Next day
he did the same before the Council. He was restored to his pleasant
quarters in Newgate, and recanted his recantation. He again withdrew,
and maintained that his confession was false, before King and Council
(December 30), ‘He knows nothing in the world of all he has said.’ The
Lord Chancellor proposed ‘to have him have the rack.’*
*State Papers, Domestic, Charles II., Dec. 30, 1678, Bundle 408.
Probably he ‘did not have the rack,’ but he had the promise of it, and
nearly died of cold, ironed, in the condemned cell. ‘He was almost dead
with the disorder in his mind, and with cold in his body,’ said Dr.
Lloyd, who visited him, to Burnet. Lloyd got a bed and a fire for
the wretch, who revived, and repeated his original confession.* Lloyd
believed in his sincerity, says Burnet, writing many years later. In
1686, Lloyd denied that he believed.
*Burnet, ii. p. 773.
Prance’s victims, Hill, Berry, and Green, were tried on February 5,
1679. Prance told his story. On one essential point he professed to know
nothing. Where was Godfrey from five to nine o’clock, the hour when he
was lured into Somerset House? He was dogged in fields near Holborn to
somewhere unknown in St. Clement’s. It is an odd fact that, though at
the dinner hour, one o’clock, close to his own house, and to that of
Mr. Welden (who had asked him to dine), Sir Edmund seems to have dined
nowhere. Had he done so, even in a tavern, he must have been recognised.
Probably Godfrey was dead long before 9 P.M. Mr. Justice Wild pressed
Prance on this point of where Godfrey was; he could say nothing.* Much
evidence (on one point absurd) was collected later by L’Estrange, and
is accepted by North in his ‘Examen,’ to prove that, by some of his
friends, Godfrey was reckoned ‘missing’ in the afternoon of the fatal
Saturday.** But no such evidence was wanted when Hill, Berry, and
Green were tried.*** The prosecution, with reckless impudence,
mingled Bedloe’s and Prance’s contradictory lies, and accused Bedloe’s
‘Jesuits,’ Walsh and Le Fevre, in company with Prance’s priests, Gerald
and Kelly.**** Bedloe, in his story before the jury, involved himself in
even more contradictory lies than usual. But, even now, he did not say
anything that really implicated the men accused by Prance, while
Prance said not a word, in Court or elsewhere, about the men accused by
Bedloe.*****
*State Trials, vii. 177.
**This is said in 1681 in A Letter to Miles Prance.
***North, Examen, p. 201.
****State Trials, vii, 178 (Speech of Serjeant Stringer).
*****Ibid. vii. 179-183.
Lord Chief Justice Scroggs actually told the jury that ‘for two
witnesses to agree as to many material circumstances with one another,
that had never conversed together, is impossible.... They agree so
in all things.’* The two witnesses did not agree at all, as we have
abundantly seen, but, in the fury of Protestant fear, any injustice
could be committed, and every kind of injustice was committed at this
trial. Prance later pleaded guilty on a charge of perjury, and well he
might. Bedloe died, and went to his own place with lies in his mouth.
*State Trials, vii. 216.
5.
If I held a brief against the Jesuits, I should make much of a point
which Mr. Pollock does not labour. Just about the time when Prance began
confessing, in London, December 24, 1678, one Stephen Dugdale, styled
‘gentleman,’ was arrested in Staffordshire, examined, and sent up to
town. He was a Catholic, and had been in Lord Aston’s service, but was
dismissed for dishonesty. In the country, at Tixall, he knew a Jesuit
named Evers, and through Evers he professed to know much about the
mythical plot to kill the King, and the rest of the farrago of lies. At
the trial of the five Jesuits, in June 1679, Dugdale told what he had
told privately, under examination, on March 21, 1679.* This revelation
was that Harcourt, a Jesuit, had written from town to Evers, a Jesuit
at Tixall, by the night post of Saturday, October 12, 1678, ‘This very
night Sir Edmundbury (sic) Godfrey is dispatched.’ The letter reached
Tixall by Monday, October 14.
*Fitzherbert MSS; State Trials, vii. 338.
Mr. Pollock writes: ‘Dugdale was proved to have spoken on Tuesday,
October 15, 1678, of the death of a justice of the peace in Westminster,
which does not go far.’* But if this is PROVED, it appears to go all the
way; unless we can explain Dugdale’s information without involving
the guilty knowledge of Harcourt. The proof that Dugdale, on Tuesday,
October 15, spoke at Tixall of Godfrey’s death, two days before
Godfrey’s body was found near London, stands thus: at the trial of the
Jesuits a gentleman, Chetwyn, gave evidence that, on the morning of
Tuesday, October 15, a Mr. Sanbidge told him that Dugdale had talked
at an alehouse about the slaying of a justice of peace of Westminster.
Chetwyn was certain of the date, because on that day he went to
Litchfield races. At Litchfield he stayed till Saturday, October 19,
when he heard from London of the discovery of Godfrey’s body.** Chetwyn
asked Dugdale about this, when Dugdale was sent to town, in December
1678. Dugdale said he remembered the facts, but, as he did not report
them to his examiners (a singular omission), he was not called as a
witness at the trial of Berry, Green, and Hill. Chetwyn later asked
Dugdale why he was not called, and said: ‘Pray let me see the copy of
your deposition sworn before the Council. He showed it me, and there was
not a syllable of it, that I could see, BUT AFTERWARDS IT APPEARED TO BE
THERE.’
*Pollock, p. 341, note 2.
**State Trials, vii. 339, 341,
Lord Chief Justice. ‘That is not very material, if the thing itself be
true.’
Chetwyn. ‘But its not being there made me remember it.’
Its later appearance, ‘there,’ shows how depositions were handled!
Chetwyn, in June 1679, says that he heard of Dugdale’s words as to the
murder, from Mr. Sanbidge, or Sambidge, or Sawbridge. At the trial of
Lord Stafford (1680) Sanbidge ‘took it upon his salvation’ that Dugdale
told him nothing of the matter, and vowed that Dugdale was a wicked
rogue.* Mr. Wilson, the parish clergyman of Tixall, was said to have
heard Dugdale speak of Godfrey’s death on October 14. He also remembered
no such thing. Hanson, a running-man, heard Dugdale talk of the murder
of a justice of the peace at Westminster as early as the morning of
Monday, October 14, 1678: the London Saturday post arrived at Tixall on
Monday morning. Two gentlemen, Birch and Turton, averred that the
news of the murder ‘was all over the country’ near Tixall, on Tuesday,
October 15; but Turton was not sure that he did not hear first of the
fact on Friday, October 18, which, by ordinary post from London, was
impossible.
*State Trials, vii. 1406.
Such was the evidence to show that Dugdale spoke of Godfrey’s death, in
the country, two or three days before Godfrey’s body was found. The fact
can scarcely be said to be PROVED, considering the excitement of men’s
minds, the fallacies of memory, the silence of Dugdale at his first
examination before the Council, Sanbidge’s refusal to corroborate
Chetwyn, and Wilson’s inability to remember anything about a matter
so remarkable and so recent. To deny, like Sanbidge, to be unable to
remember, like Wilson, demanded some courage, in face of the frenzied
terror of the Protestants. Birch confessedly took no notice of the
rumour, when it first reached him, but at the trial of Green, Berry,
and Hill, ‘I told several gentlemen that I did perfectly remember before
Thursday it was discoursed of in the country by several gentlemen where
I lived.’* The ‘several gentlemen’ whom Birch ‘told’ were not called
to corroborate him. In short, the evidence seems to fall short of
demonstrative proof.
*State Trials. vii. 1455.
But, if it were all true, L’Estrange (and a writer who made the
assertion in 1681) collected a good deal of evidence* to show that
a rumour of Godfrey’s disappearance, and probable murder by bloody
Papists, was current in London on the afternoon of the day when he
disappeared, Saturday, October 12.*** Mr. Pollock says that the evidence
is ‘not to be relied on,’ and part of it, attributing the rumour to
Godfrey’s brothers, is absurd. THEY were afraid that Godfrey had killed
himself, not that he was murdered by Papists. That ‘his household could
not have known that he would not return,’ is not to the point. The
people who raised the rumour were not of Godfrey’s household. Nor is it
to the point, exactly, that, being invited to dine on Saturday by Mr.
Welden, who saw him on Friday night, ‘he said he could not tell whether
he should.’** For Wynell had expected to dine with him at Welden’s to
talk over some private business about house property.*** Wynell (the
authority for Godfrey’s being ‘master of a dangerous secret’) did expect
to meet Godfrey at dinner, and, knowing the fears to which Godfrey often
confessed, might himself have originated, by his fussy inquiries, the
rumour that Sir Edmund was missing. The wild excitement of the town
might add ‘murdered by Papists,’ and the rumour might really get into a
letter from London of Saturday night, reaching Tixall by Monday morning.
North says: ‘It was in every one’s mouth, WHERE IS GODFREY? HE HAS
NOT BEEN AT HIS HOUSE ALL THIS DAY, THEY SAY HE IS MURDERED BY THE
PAPISTS.’**** That such a pheemee might arise is very conceivable. In
all probability the report which Bishop Burnet and Dr. Lloyd heard of
the discovery of Godfrey’s body, before it was discovered, was another
rumour, based on a lucky conjecture. It is said that the report of the
fall of Khartoum was current in Cairo on the day of the unhappy event.
Rumour is correct once in a myriad times, and, in October 1678, London
was humming with rumours. THIS report might get into a letter to Tixall,
and, if so, Dugdale’s early knowledge is accounted for; if knowledge he
had, which I have shown to be disputable.
*Letter to Miles Prance, March, 1681. L’Estrange, Brief History,
iii. pp. 195-201.
**Lords’ MSS., p. 48; Pollock, p. 93, and note 2.
***L’Estrange, Brief History, iii. pp. 188, 190, 195.
****Examen, p. 201. Anglicised version of the author’s
original Greek text.
Dugdale’s talk was thought, at the time, to clinch the demonstration
that the Jesuits were concerned in Godfrey’s murder, L’Estrange says,
and he brings in his witnesses to prove, that the London rumour existed,
and could reach the country by post. In fact, Chetwyn, on the evidence
of Sanbidge, suggested this improvement of his original romance to
Dugdale, and Sanbidge contradicted Chetwyn. He knew nothing of the
matter. Such is the value of the only testimony against the Jesuits
which deserves consideration.
We do not propose to unriddle this mystery, but to show that the most
recent and industrious endeavour to solve the problem is unsuccessful.
We cannot deny that Godfrey may have been murdered to conceal Catholic
secrets, of which, thanks to his inexplicable familiarity with Coleman,
he may have had many. But we have tried to prove that we do not KNOW him
to have had any such Catholic secrets, or much beyond Oates’s fables;
and we have probably succeeded in showing that against the Jesuits, as
Sir Edmund’s destroyers, there is no evidence at all.
Had modern men of science, unaffected by political and religious
bias, given evidence equivalent to that of the two surgeons, one might
conceive that Godfrey was probably slain, as Macaulay thought, by
hotheaded Catholics. But I confess to a leaning in favour of the picture
of Godfrey sketched by L’Estrange; of the man confessing to hereditary
melancholy; fretted and alarmed by the tracasseries and perils of his
own position, alarming his friends and endangering himself by his gloomy
hints; settling, on the last night of his life (Friday, October 11),
with morbid anxiety, some details of a parish charity founded by
himself; uncertain as to whether he can dine with Welden (at about one)
next day; seen at that very hour near his own house, yet dining nowhere;
said to have roamed, before that hour, to Paddington Woods and back
again; seen vaguely, perhaps, wandering near Primrose Hill in the
afternoon, and found dead five days later in the bush-covered ditch near
Primrose Hill, his own sword through his breast and back, his body in
the attitude of one who had died a Roman death.
Between us and that conclusion--suicide caused by fear--nothing
stands but the surgical evidence, and the grounds of that evidence are
disputed.
Surgical evidence, however, is a fact ‘that winna ding,’ and I do
not rely on the theory of suicide. But, if Godfrey was murdered by
Catholics, it seems odd that nobody has suggested, as the probable
scene, the Savoy, which lay next on the right to Somerset Yard. The
Savoy, so well described by Scott in Peveril of the Peak, and by
Macaulay, was by this time a rambling, ruinous, labyrinth of lanes and
dilapidated dwellings, tenanted by adventurers and skulking Catholics.
It was an Alsatia, says Macaulay, more dangerous than the Bog of Allen,
or the passes of the Grampians. A courageous magistrate might be lured
into the Savoy to stop a fight, or on any similar pretence; and, once
within a rambling old dwelling of the Hospital, would be in far greater
peril than in the Queen’s guarded residence. Catholic adventurers might
here destroy Godfrey, either for his alleged zeal, or to seize his
papers, or because he, so great a friend of Catholics as he was, might
know too much. The body could much more easily be removed, perhaps by
water, from the Savoy, than from the guarded gates of Somerset House.
Oates knew the Savoy, and said falsely that he had met Coleman there.*
If murder was done, the Savoy was as good a place for the deed as the
Forest of Bondy.
*State Trials, vii. 28.
* * *