The Popish Plot: A study in the history of the reign of Charles II

by John Pollock

SIR EDMUND BERRY GODFREY

The death of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey has passed for one of the most remarkable mysteries in English history. The profound sensation which it caused, the momentous consequences which it produced, the extreme difficulty of discovering the truth, have rendered Godfrey’s figure fascinating to historians. Opinion as to the nature of his end has been widely different. To the minds of Kennet, Oldmixon, and Christie the Catholics were responsible. North declared that he was murdered by the patrons of Oates, to give currency to the belief in the Plot. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen hazards that Oates himself was the murderer, and is supported by Mr. Traill and Mr. Sidney Lee. L’Estrange was positive that he committed suicide. Lingard and Sir George Sitwell have given the same verdict. Ralph, Hallam, Macaulay, Ranke, and Klopp pronounce the problem unsolved. Hume has pronounced it insoluble. All have admitted the intricacy of the case and its importance. None has been able without fear of contradiction to answer the question, “What was the fate of Sir Edmund Godfrey?” On the answer to this question depends to a great extent the nature of the final judgment to be passed upon the Popish Plot. If Godfrey met his death at the hands of political assassins, the weight of the fact is obvious. If he was murdered by the Roman Catholics, much of the censure which has been poured on the Protestant party misses the mark; if by Protestant agents, that censure must be redoubled before the demands of justice are satisfied. If he committed suicide, or was done to death in a private cause, the criminal folly of many and the detestable crime of a few who in the cause of religious intolerance fastened his death upon the innocent were so black as to deserve almost the same penalty.

Scarcely ever has a fact so problematical been attended by such weighty results. Sir Edmund Godfrey left his house on October 12, 1678. On October 17 his corpse was found in the fields at the foot of Primrose Hill. From that moment belief in the Popish Plot was rooted in the mind of the nation. The excitement throughout the country rose to the mark of frenzy. Godfrey’s death seemed clear evidence of the truth of Oates’ sanguinary tales, and the prelude to a general massacre of Protestants. It became an article of faith that he had been murdered by the Catholics. To deny it was to incur the most awkward suspicion. No man thought himself safe from the same fate. Every householder laid in a stock of arms. Posts and chains barricaded the streets of the city. Night after night the Trained Bands stood to arms and paraded the town as if an insurrection were expected before morning. During the winter which followed, wrote Shaftesbury, “the soberest and most peaceable of the people have, either in town or country, hardly slept for fear of fire or massacring by the Papists.” Alderman Sir Thomas Player declared that when he went to bed “he did not know but the next morning they might all rise with their throats cut.” And this state of things continued, as sober Calamy remarked, “not for a few weeks or months only, but for a great while together.” It was regarded as most fortunate that the Protestants did not seek to avenge Godfrey and anticipate their own doom by exterminating the Roman Catholics.[136]

Upon the death of a London magistrate was grounded the firm conviction of the reality of the Popish Plot, under cover of which the Whig party was all but successful in deranging the legitimate succession to the throne, and even perhaps in overturning the monarchy itself. Of the instruments by which Shaftesbury turned the Plot to this end, none was more powerful than the belief in Godfrey’s murder. In one connection or another that event appeared in almost all the state trials of the two following years, in the debates in Parliament, in the pulpit, on the stage.[137] The part which it played in the electioneering methods of the Whigs was still more formidable, and Godfrey’s corpse was a central figure in the grand annual ceremonies of Pope Burning, which were arranged by the Green Ribbon Club.[138] Without the mystery of Godfrey’s death it is possible that the agitation of the plot would have burnt itself out in the course of a few months. As it was, the fuel was fanned into a blaze of unexampled fierceness, which did not die down until nearly three momentous years in English history had passed.

No one undertaking the study of this problem is likely to underrate the difficulty of the task. To find a solution is obviously a matter of great importance; but it is also a matter in which small success may reasonably be expected. The door of the secret has remained unopened for so long. The door is not one which can be forced, and the key is missing. It would be worse than sanguine to hope for its discovery after a light search. Nevertheless there is some hope. “When a door-key is missing,” says Dr. Gardiner, “the householder does not lose time in deploring the intricacy of the lock; he tries every key at his disposal to see whether it will fit the wards, and only sends for the locksmith when he finds that his own keys are useless. So it is with historical inquiry.... Try, if need be, one hypothesis after another.... Apply them to the evidence, and when one fails to unlock the secret, try another. Only when all imaginable keys have failed, have you a right to call the public to witness your avowal of incompetence to solve the riddle.”[139] In the case of the Gunpowder Plot Dr. Gardiner tried the key afforded by the traditional story and found that it fitted the lock. With the secret of Sir Edmund Godfrey’s death the method must be different. There is no traditional story to test. What seems more remarkable is that no determined attempt has been made to construct a consistent theory to fill the empty place. Contemporaries who approached the question answered it according to their prejudice, and selected only such evidence as would support their preconceptions. Later historians who have answered definitely have arrived at their conclusions by considering the balance of general probability in the matter, and have supported them from the contemporaries whose evidence lies on the side to which the balance seems to them to fall. No one has formed a hypothesis to explain the facts and tested it by all the evidence, in whatever direction it seems to point. The following study is an attempt to accomplish this. It would be impertinent to suppose that it offers a perfect key to fit the lock. But it offers a key with which trial may be made, and which may not be found altogether of the wrong size and shape. There is at least a hypothesis to be tested. If it jars with established fact, this will be detected. If the test reveals assumptions which are beyond the scope of legitimate imagination, it must be discarded. At least its abandonment will be because it has been shown to be inconsistent with the facts of the case. It will then leave the way clear for the same test to be applied to another theory.

Sir Edmund Berry—and not Edmundbury—Godfrey was a justice of the peace for the county of Middlesex and the city of Westminster. He came of a Kentish family of some wealth and of good repute in the county. His elder brother, father, and grandfather had all been justices of the peace before him, and he was popularly said himself to be “the best justice of the peace in England.” He had been educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, had spent some time in travelling abroad, was a member of Gray’s Inn, and owned a prosperous business as merchant of wood and coal in Hartshorn Lane, near Charing Cross.[140] To the public he had long been known. During the ghastly year when London was in the grip of the plague and all who could fled to the pure air of the country, Godfrey stayed at his post in town. London was given up to the dying, the dead, and their plunderers. In the midst of the chaos Godfrey went about his duties with redoubled energy and conspicuous gallantry. Numerous thefts from corpses were traced to a notorious ruffian. A warrant was issued for his apprehension. The wretch took refuge in the pest-house, whither none would follow him. Godfrey himself entered the forbidden spot and took the man alone. As an appropriate punishment he sentenced him to be whipped round the churchyard which he had robbed. It was of this time that his friend Dr. Lloyd spoke: “He was the man (shall I say the only man of his place?) that stayed to do good, and did the good he stayed for.... His house was not only the seat of justice, but an hospital of charity.”[141] The king was not slow to recognise good service, especially when the recognition was not expensive. Charles gave Godfrey a knighthood and a silver tankard, inscribed with an eulogy of the service which he had done during the plague and the great fire.[142] Three years later Godfrey roused sentiments of a less grateful character in his sovereign. Sir Alexander Frazier, the king’s physician, owed the justice £30 for firewood. Godfrey issued a writ against the debtor; but Frazier took the matter before the king, the bailiffs were arrested, and together with the magistrate were committed to the porter’s lodge at Whitehall. Charles was so much angered at the interference with his servant that he had the bailiffs flogged, and was scarcely restrained from ordering the infliction of the same punishment on Godfrey himself. “The justice,” writes Pepys, “do lie and justify his act, and says he will suffer in the cause for the people, and do refuse to receive almost any nutriment.” To the great wrath of the king, Godfrey was supported by the Lord Chief Justice and several of the judges. After an imprisonment of six days Charles was forced to set the magistrate at liberty and to restore him to the commission of the peace from which his name had been struck off.[143]

A portrait of Godfrey belongs to the parish of St. Martin in the Fields.[144] It shows the bust of a spare man, dressed in a close-fitting coat of dark material, a high lace collar, and a full-bottomed wig. The head is large, the forehead wide and high, the nose hooked, the chin strong and prominent. The frank eyes and pleasant expression of the firm lips belie the idea of melancholy. Godfrey’s height was exceptional, and his appearance made more striking by a pronounced stoop. He commonly wore a broad-brimmed hat with a gold band, and in walking fixed his eyes on the ground, as though in deep thought. Now and again he wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. “He was a man,” writes Roger North, “so remarkable in person and garb, that, described at Wapping, he could not be mistaken at Westminster.”[145] Godfrey moved in good society. He numbered the Earl of Danby among his acquaintance, was on terms of friendship with Sir William Jones and the Lord Chancellor, and counted Gilbert Burnet and Dr. Lloyd among his intimates.

Early in 1678 he was ordered to the south of France for the benefit of his health. He stayed for some months at Montpellier, and there admired the construction of the great canal which Louis XIV was undertaking to connect the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.[146] Late in the summer Godfrey returned to England and resumed his magisterial duties in London. It was scarcely beyond the ordinary scope of these when on September 6 three men entered his office and desired him to swear one of them to the truth of certain information which he had committed to writing. The three were Titus Oates, Dr. Tonge, and Christopher Kirkby. The paper contained Oates’ famous information drawn up in forty-three articles. Oates made affidavit to the truth of the contents, and his oath was witnessed by his two friends and attested by Godfrey. They refused however to allow the magistrate to read the information in detail, “telling him that his Majesty had already a true copy thereof, and that it was not convenient that it should be yet communicated to anybody else, only acquainting him in general that it contained matter of treason and felony and other high crimes.” Godfrey was satisfied, and the three men departed without more ado.[147] Oates professed afterwards to have taken this course as a safeguard for himself and his discovery from the vengeance of the Jesuits. His motive was far more probably to form a connection apart from the court, where he had been poorly received. At this point, so far as Godfrey was concerned, the matter rested. He was relieved of responsibility by the fact that the information had been forwarded to the king, and there were no steps for him to take. But on the morning of Saturday, September 28, Oates appeared before him again. Kirkby and Tonge had been summoned to the council the previous evening, but before they could be fetched the council had risen after giving orders that they should attend the next day. During the last three weeks the informer and his allies had felt their distrust of the council become more acute. While Oates had been engaged in writing copies of his information, Tonge had on several occasions been refused admittance to the Lord Treasurer. They believed that the discovery was neglected, and probably suspected that the summons to Whitehall was the prelude to discredit and imprisonment. To guard against this they determined to remove the matter from the discretion of the council. Two copies of the information, now in the form of eighty-three articles, were laid before Godfrey, who attested Oates’ oath to the truth of their contents. One Godfrey retained in his possession, the other was taken by Oates to the council at Whitehall.[148]

Godfrey was now in the centre of the intrigue. His eminence and reputation for the fearless performance of his duty had no doubt directed Oates to select him as the recipient of the discovery. The fact that he was known to have resisted pressure from court with success on a former occasion made it likely that he would not submit to be bullied or cajoled into suppressing the information if, as Oates feared, the court had determined on this. He would certainly insist upon making the facts public and would force an inquiry into the matter. As a matter of fact Oates and Tonge were mistaken, for the council proposed to investigate the case thoroughly. Even so, it was from their point of view a good move to lay the information before Godfrey. It would appear to be evidence of Oates’ desire to act in a straightforward manner and frankly according to the law. But in doing so they introduced a complication of which they were probably unaware. Godfrey was not only remarkable for his ability as justice of the peace, but for the tolerance with which he dealt between the parties and creeds with which the business of every magistrate lay. He was credited with sound principles in church and state, but he did not find it inconsistent with these to allow his vigilance to sleep on occasion. The penal laws against dissenters were not to his mind, and he refrained from their strict execution. He “was not apt to search for priests or mass-houses: so that few men of his zeal lived upon better terms with the papists than he did.” Dr. Lloyd put the matter in his funeral sermon: “The compassion that he had for all men that did amiss extended itself to all manner of dissenters, and amongst them he had a kindness for the persons of many Roman Catholics.” Among these was Edward Coleman, secretary of the Duchess of York, who was now accused by Oates of high treason.[149] The intimacy between the two men exercised a profound influence upon the course of after events, which Oates could not have foreseen. After Godfrey’s disappearance his connection with Coleman became known; but at the time it was only apparent that Godfrey was an energetic magistrate who possessed the somewhat rare quality of being impervious to court influence. That he was upon friendly terms with the Roman Catholics was, for the informer’s purpose, of little moment. Oates was in search of support outside the council-chamber, and Godfrey offered exactly what he wanted. In case the government wished to suppress the discovery of the plot, Godfrey was not the man to acquiesce in such a design on account of private considerations.

On Saturday, October 12, Sir Edmund Godfrey left his house in Hartshorn Lane between nine and ten o’clock in the morning. That night he did not return home. The next day Godfrey’s clerk sent to inquire at his mother’s house in Hammersmith. Obtaining no news there, the clerk communicated with his master’s two brothers, who lived in the city. They sent word that they would come to Hartshorn Lane later in the day, and enjoined the clerk meanwhile to keep Godfrey’s absence secret. In the evening Mr. Michael and Mr. Benjamin Godfrey appeared at their brother’s house, and set out in company with the clerk upon a round of inquiry. That night and all Monday they continued the search, but could nowhere obtain tidings of the missing man. On Tuesday the brothers laid information of Godfrey’s absence before the Lord Chancellor, and in the afternoon of the same day the clerk publicly announced his disappearance at a crowded funeral.[150] Up to this time the fact was unknown except to Godfrey’s household and near relatives. It was afterwards asserted by those who wished to prove his suicide that the secret had been kept in order to prevent discovery of the manner of his death. The law directed that the estate of a person dying by his own hand should be forfeited to the crown, and to prevent the forfeiture Godfrey’s family concealed the fact. Sir Roger L’Estrange devoted some effort to establish this.[151] He was however so unwise as immediately to demolish his case by collecting evidence to show that the dead man’s brothers had approached the Lord Chancellor, “to beg his lordship’s assistance to secure their brother’s estate, in case he should be found to have made himself away.”[152] Certainly, if the Godfreys had known his suicide and had been moved to conceal it in order to save his estate, the last person in the world to whom they would have admitted their motive was the Lord Chancellor. L’Estrange’s sense of the contradictory was small. Not only did he commit this blunder, but he was at considerable pains to show that the fact of Godfrey’s disappearance was never concealed at all; on the contrary, the news was bruited about the town as early as the afternoon of the day on which Sir Edmund left his house, in order to raise a cry that he had been murdered by the Roman Catholics.[153] He did not consider that, as the only persons who had first-hand news of Godfrey’s absence were members of his family, the rumour must have emanated from themselves; whereas he persisted at the same time that their one object was to keep the fact secret. There was good reason why the family should be unwilling to publish Sir Edmund’s disappearance until they had, if possible, some clue to his whereabouts or his fate. A man of his prominence and consideration could not vanish from the scene without giving rise to reports of an unpleasant nature. When for expedience sake his brothers announced that he was missing and brought the matter to the notice of government, there sprang into being tales which any persons of repute would have been glad to avoid, none the less because they perhaps believed that some of them might be true. On the Wednesday and Thursday following stories of Godfrey’s adventures were rife. He had chosen to disappear to escape creditors, to whom he owed large sums of money. As no creditors appeared this notion was exploded.[154] He had been suddenly married in scandalous circumstances to a lady of fortune. He had been traced to a house of ill repute, now in one part of the town, now in another, and there found in the midst of a debauch. With one of these last stories the Duke of Norfolk went armed to Whitehall, and was so ill-advised as to announce it for a fact. But gradually, as none of them gained support, the rumour spread that Godfrey had been murdered. It was reported that he had been last seen at the Cock-pit, the Earl of Danby’s house; then at the Duke of Norfolk’s residence, Arundel House; then at St. James’, the Duke of York’s palace; even Whitehall, it was said, was not spared.[155] The general belief was, “the Papists have made away with him.” Everywhere the missing magistrate afforded the main topic of conversation. The government was occupied with the case. Michael and Benjamin Godfrey were summoned before the council, and there was talk of a proclamation on the subject.[156]