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." 6 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, 1 L'Estrange, Brief History, iii. pp. 87-89. 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. 6 1 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.2 1 Pollock, The Popish Plot, Duckworth, London, 1903. 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.1 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.2 Privately printed, 1894, Sir George's book 1 L'Estrange, Brief History of the Times, London, 1687. 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. '1 L'Estrange argued that the neck was not broken (giving an example of a similar error in the 1 Burnet, History of his own Time, ii. p. 741. 1725. |