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.’
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