Prance’s attitude as it has here been sketched accorded entirely with the rest of his evidence. In his examination before the council he began his story; “On a certain Monday.”[294] When he was taken by Monmouth and Ossory to Somerset House he said “that it was either at the latter end or the beginning of the week” that Godfrey had met his death.[295] The significance of this is clear. No one wishing to construct a false account of the murder could possibly have made these statements. It was notorious that Godfrey had disappeared upon Saturday, October 12. To postpone the date of the murder would be to add a ludicrous difficulty to the story. This is exactly what Prance wanted to do. If only he could be branded as a liar and thrust ignominiously out of the circle of inquiry, his dearest object would be accomplished. Other statements in his information make it certain that this was the case. After naming Monday night as the time of the murder, he went on to say to the council that the body lay in Somerset House for four days, and was then carried away on the night of Wednesday. Reckoning at the shortest, the fourth day from Monday night was Friday, twenty-four hours after Godfrey’s body was found. Reckoning backwards from Wednesday, the fourth day was Saturday, when Godfrey was missed. Prance was therefore deliberately falsifying his evidence in point of time when he named Monday. A similar result is obtained from his examination by the Duke of Monmouth. In that he said that the day of the murder was either at the latter end or the beginning of the week. He further said “that the body lay in Somerset House about six or seven days before it was carried out.” Counting the week-end from Friday to Tuesday, six days from either of those or the intermediate points brings the calculation at least to Thursday. At the same time Prance declared that the body was removed at midnight on Wednesday. It is evident that he was trying to throw dust in the eyes of the investigators. These tactics were in vain, and he was forced to tell the story in point of time truthfully. As for the fictitious view of the body on the night of October 14, Prance simply told Bedloe’s story with as little variation as possible, with the exception that he did not mention Bedloe at all. Bedloe had landed himself in hopeless confusion when he was taken to Somerset House to shew the room where it had taken place.[296] Prance did not attempt to point it out.

Prance did not stop at his evidence on the subject of the murder, but went on to give information as to the Plot. Unless he had done so he could hardly have hoped to escape from prison, for it would seem incredible to the authorities that he should know so much and yet not know more. Perhaps too he was bitten with the excitement and glory of an informer’s life. His evidence was not however calculated to assist materially the party whose interest it was to prosecute the plot. He had already aroused annoyance by contradicting Bedloe’s evidence concerning the murder.[297] He now proceeded to spin out a string of utterly ridiculous stories about the Jesuits and other Roman Catholics. All that was important in his evidence was hearsay or directed against men who had already to contend against weightier accusations. He declared that Fenwick, Ireland, and Grove had told him that four of the five Popish lords were “to command the army.”[298] They had for some time past been in prison in the Tower on far more direct charges. At the trial of Ireland and Grove Prance was not produced as a witness at all. At the trial of Whitbread, Fenwick, and Harcourt he made the same statement. Fenwick had told him also that he need not fear to lose his trade in the case of civil war, for he should have plenty of work to do in making church ornaments.[299] These stories were again retailed at the trials of Langhorn and Wakeman.[300] When he was summoned as a witness against Lord Stafford he could say no more than that one Singleton, a priest, had told him “that he would make no more to stab forty parliament men than to eat his dinner.”[301] Much of his evidence about the Plot was so ludicrous that it could never be brought into court at all. Four men were to kill the Earl of Shaftesbury and went continually with pistols in their pockets. One Bradshaw, an upholsterer, had said openly in a tavern that it was no more sin to kill a Protestant than to kill a dog, and that “he was resolved to kill some of the busy lords.” It was the commonest talk among Roman Catholics that the king and Lord Shaftesbury were to be murdered. It was equally an ordinary subject of conversation that a great army was to be raised for the extirpation of heretics. A surgeon, named Ridley, had often told him “that he hoped to be chirurgeon to the Catholic army in England”; and when he complimented one Moore, a servant of the Duke of Norfolk, upon “a very brave horse” which he was riding, “Moore wished that he had ten thousand of them, and hoped in a short time that they might have them for the Catholic cause.” In his publication Prance added to this a disquisition on the immorality of the secular priests, among whom he had at the time two brothers.[302] So tangled and nonsensical a tale could be a source of strength to no prosecution. Dr. Lloyd was alarmed at the extent and facility of Prance’s new information.[303] Bishop Burnet thought, “It looked very strange, and added no credit to his other evidence that the papists should thus be talking of killing the king as if it had been a common piece of news.[304] And Warner, the Jesuit provincial, characterised Prance’s later evidence as of little scope and less weight.”[305]

To how many persons Prance’s real position in the tortuous intrigues which circled round the murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey was known is a question very difficult to answer. By the Jesuit writers on the Plot his character is treated with a moderation foreign to their attacks on the other informers. He is to them “a silversmith of no obscurity,” and “by far less guilty than the rest in the crimes of their past lives.”[306] It is hard to think that some of them were not acquainted with the part which he had played. There are stronger indications that within a select circle his true character was appreciated. When James II came to the throne Prance was brought to trial for perjury, and on June 15, 1686 pleaded guilty to the charge. The court treated him to a lecture in which his conduct was compared favourably to that of Oates, who had remained hardened to the end, and promised to have compassion on a true penitent. He was sentenced to pay a fine of a hundred pounds, to be three times pilloried for the space of an hour, and to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. The last and heaviest part of the punishment, the flogging, under which Oates’ iron frame had nearly sunk, was remitted by the king’s command.[307] There is considerable reason to believe that the trial was collusive and the result prearranged. That Prance should confess himself perjured is easy to understand: to understand why Prance’s sentence was lightened, unless it was in reward for good service done, would be very difficult. All the reasons which had worked before for the exculpation of the Roman Catholics from the guilt of Godfrey’s murder were now redoubled in force. Oates had already suffered for his crimes. The Popish Plot, as Sir John Reresby told James, was not only dead, but buried. To overthrow the Protestant story of Godfrey’s death would be to throw the last sod upon its grave. This was much; but James was not the man to forego without reason the sweetest part of his vengeance upon the witness who had set up that story. The rancour with which he pursued Oates and Dangerfield seemed to have completely vanished when the turn came to Prance. Prance had certainly diverted the investigation from James’ personal neighbourhood; but Oates had been saved nothing of his terrible punishment by the fact that he had cleared the Duke of York in his first revelation of the plot. The harm done by Dangerfield to the Catholic cause was nothing compared to that accomplished by Prance, if the surface of events told a true tale. Dangerfield was whipped, if not to death, at least to a point near it. But Prance was let off the lash. Without the flogging his sentence was trifling. James had no love for light sentences in themselves. His action is only explicable on the ground that he was acquainted with the truth, and knew how valuable an instrument Prance had proved himself.

One man at least could have told him the facts: Father John Warner, late provincial of the Jesuits in England and confessor of the king. Less than three years later, when the storm of revolution burst over the Catholic court and drove its supporters to seek a penurious refuge on the continent, a shipload of these was setting out from Gravesend in mid December. They were bound for Dunkirk with as many valuables as they could carry with them. Before they could set sail, information was laid and an active man, aided by the officers of the harbour, boarded the vessel. The last passengers were being rowed out from shore. They were arrested in the boat and carried back with the others seized on the ship. They were Father Warner and Miles Prance. While the officers were busy in caring for the captured property, their prisoners escaped. Warner made his way to Maidstone and by means of a forged passport crossed the Channel. Prance was soon after retaken in the attempt to follow under a false name. The vessel on board which he was found was seized, but those on her were discharged, and Prance was probably successful in his third endeavour to reach the continent.[308] Supposing that Prance had been the Protestant puppet which he has been believed, this was queer company in which to find him. He had attacked Warner’s religion, accused his friends, and brought to death those of his faith by false oaths. His confession of perjury would hardly weigh down the scale against this. At least he was not the man whom Warner would choose as a travelling companion on a journey in which detection might at any moment mean imprisonment and even death. The risk that Prance would turn coat again and denounce him was not inconsiderable. Prance’s conduct too was remarkable. Why should he fly from the Revolution? True, he had confessed that his accusations of the Catholics were false, and he could not expect great gratitude from the party in power; but he had only to retract his words once more, on the plea that his confession had been extorted against his will, to live in safety, at any rate, if not with prosperity. Away from England, surrounded by those whom he had wronged, the future before him was hopeless.

The supposition cannot be supported. Prance’s position in the politics of the plot is not easy to set in a clear light. The attempt made here to do so at least offers a hypothesis by which some of the difficulties are explained. The last phase of the informer’s career, at all events, becomes intelligible. Prance had been throughout one of the most astute and audacious of the Jesuit agents, and Warner must have been perfectly aware of the fact.

The success of Godfrey’s murder as a political move is indubitable. The Duke of York was the pivot of the Roman Catholic schemes in England,[309] and Godfrey’s death saved both from utter ruin. Nevertheless it was attended by gravely adverse consequences. If the fact of the Jesuit congregation at St. James’ Palace had become known, nothing could have saved the duke. But the crime which prevented this gave an impetus to the pursuit of the Plot and a strength to the Whig party, so great that it all but succeeded in barring him from the throne and establishing a Protestant dynasty. Godfrey’s fame rose almost to the height of legend. On a Sunday in the February after his murder a great darkness overspread the face of the sky of London. The atmosphere was so murky that in many churches service could not be continued without the aid of candles. It was said that in the midst of the gloom in the queen’s chapel at Somerset House, even while mass was being said, the figure of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey appeared above the altar. Thereafter the place went by the name of Godfrey Hall.[310]

POLITICS OF THE PLOT

CHAPTER I

THE GOVERNMENT

“The English nation are a sober people,” wrote Charles I to his abler son, “however at present infatuated.” Charles II had greater right than ever his father to believe that his subjects were mad. The appearance of Oates and the death of Godfrey heralded an outburst of feeling as monstrous as the obscure events which were its cause. From the sense of proportion they had displayed in the Civil War the English people seemed now divorced and, while they affected to judge those of “less happier lands” fickle and tempest-tossed, let the tide of insobriety mount to the point of complete abandonment. Public opinion was formed without reason. The accumulated suspicion and hatred of years swelled into an overpowering volume of tumultuous emotion. Scarcely the most sane escaped the prevailing contagion of prejudice and terror. None could tell where the spread would stop.