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.
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.
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
