besides wch would doe the King's businesse. Hee protested solemnly hee never said any such words or if hee did hee never remembred, butt if hee had it was with no intention of Malice. Then Monsieur Daillie turned to the people and made a discourse in vindication of those of the Religion that it was no Principle of theirs attempts on the persons of King[s] butt only loyalty and obedience. This ended hee went away; hee staid about an hour in all, and immediately as soon as he was gone, they went to their worke and gave him eleven blows with a barre and laid him on the wheele. Hee was two houres dying. All about Mons" Daillie I heard from his own mouth for I went to wait on him because it was reported hee had said something concerning the King of England butt hee could tell mee nothing of that. There was a flying report that he should say going from the Chastelet—The Duke of York hath done mee a great injury-The Swisses they say resented his [Marsilly's] taking and misst butt an hour to take them which betrayed him [the monk] after whom they sent. When he was on the wheele hee was heard to say Le Roy est grand tyrant, Le Roy me traitte d'un façon fort barbare. All that you read concerning oaths and dying en enrage is false all the oaths hee used being only asseverations to Mons Daillie that he was falsely accused as to the King's person. Sr I am &c VI. The Ambassador Montague to Arlington.1 My Lord, Paris: June 22, 1669. The Lieutenant criminel hath proceeded pretty farre with Le Roux Marsilly. The crime they forme their processe on beeing a rape which he had formerly committed at 1 State Papers, France, vol. 126. Nismes soe that he perceiving but little hopes of his life, sent word to the King if hee would pardon him he could reveale things to him which would concerne him more and be of greater consequence to him, than his destruction. My Lord, VII. The same to the same. Paris: June 26, '69. I heard that Marsilly was to be broke on the wheel and I gave order then to one of my servants to write Mr. Williamson word of it, soe I suppose you have heard of it already they hastened his execution for feare he should have dyed of the hurt he had done himself the day before; they sent for a minister to him when he was upon the scaffold to see if he would confesse anything, but he still persisted that he was guilty of nothing nor did not know why he was put to death. III THE MYSTERY OF SIR EDMUND BERRY GODFREY 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. 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 1 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. 2 Pollock, Popish Plot, pp. 95, 96. Brown in Brief History, iii. pp. 212–215, 222. |