The Strange Death of Edmund Godfrey

by Alan Marshall

  If his setting for the crime was improbable Bedloe’s account of the deed was still more so. The men he accused, as we have seen, were named as Le Phaire or Le Fèvre, Walsh, Samuel Atkins (until Atkins’ alibi was proved), Pritchard (a waiter in the queen’s chapel) and other vague individuals, including Miles Prance, when Bedloe finally recognised him. He said that they had met Godfrey in the King’s Inn in the Strand and persuaded him that they had evidence of the plot in Somerset House. But once he had been lured into a small room, the magistrate had been threatened with a pistol, had refused to submit and had thus been stifled between two pillows as well as strangled. His corpse had been lugged behind a suitable arras, or the high altar in the queen’s chapel (William was not quite sure which) and concealed there for a few days. Thereafter by sedan chair and coach the conspirators had moved the corpse to Primrose Hill. Various sums, from 2,000 to 4,000 guineas, had been offered to Bedloe to join in but he had refused them all and fled precipitously back to the West Country. He said the murder had taken place sometime between 2 and 5 o’clock on the Saturday.

  There were many improbabilities within Bedloe’s tale and he was deliberately vague. So much so that we must question his evidence, for few seem to have dared do so at the time. The improbabilities of Bedloe’s story mount with each reading. Why had no one else seen this crime? It was carried out in a royal palace bustling with people in mid-afternoon. How had no one prevented this group of men leaving a guarded royal palace with a corpse? This aside, it must have soon become clear that Bedloe not only had a history of European-wide fraud and criminality behind him, but also his past could not be completely covered up, and so his word was hardly trustworthy. In fact he had been languishing in jail just a few weeks before the killing.

  If his evidence was untrustworthy, was he himself a candidate for the murderer? This is possible. Bedloe knew of Oates and may well have got wind of his schemes either in Spain or in London. But once more we are faced with insurmountable problems. If Bedloe was guilty, where was the deed carried out? Where was the body hidden for at least five nights? Bedloe seems an unlikely murderer in the end for Oates himself admitted that William had never even seen the magistrate before and knew nothing of the crime, but was only involved for the £500 reward. In general those involved were willing to accept any answer they could find to solve the puzzle, however improbable, and William Bedloe, of course, pointed out Miles Prance as being central to the case.

  Titus Oates called Prance a blockhead. He was not such a rogue as Oates, but he was a self-confessed perjurer and eventually proved rather a worthless man all round. Yet Miles Prance was crucial to the official version of how Godfrey met his end. It was Prance who confirmed Somerset House as being the scene of the crime, and it was Prance who provided the authorities with some culprits who had not vanished: Green, Berry and Hill. They had all been arrested by 24 December 1678. Naturally, as we have seen, all three men denied having anything to do with the crime, but were ignored. Even after Prance had recanted his first confession and changed his mind under pressure, only to be persuaded to return to his first story, he was a prime witness, and a desperate regime, anxious to placate parliament with some culprits, was not willing to give up on him. How was it possible then for Prance to create his version of events?

  We may first remember that Prance would have been well aware of Godfrey’s actual injuries.62 Unlike Bedloe, he had connections among the crowd at the White House. The club of which Prance was a member met on the Sunday after the inquest had closed. Also the nature of Godfrey’s injuries was published soon after the inquest, certainly before Prance’s arrest. Prance also knew his way around Somerset House: he had not only worked there, but was also a familiar figure to the residents. He may also have known that Bedloe had used the palace as his setting for the murder. After Bedloe’s revelations the government had sent troops to surround the palace and seize any suspicious-looking papers. Bedloe himself had been taken down to the building and caused something of stir there. It would not have taken much to put together what exactly the authorities had been looking for in the palace. But unfortunately Prance’s tale differed considerably from that of William Bedloe. While Prance named Fathers Girald and Kelly, who had fled, he also picked on his acquaintances Green, Berry and Hill, but he left out the men whom Bedloe had named. Moreover, Prance’s relation of the crime and his statements were not only more detailed than those of Bedloe, they also differed from Bedloe’s account. The motive for the killing now became that Godfrey had been overly busy in the persecution of Catholics, as one might expect from a man with the reputation of a staunch and worthy upholder of the law. This, said Prance, was why the priests wanted him eliminated. Prance apparently did not know, or simply ignored the fact, that the magistrate was in reality liberal to Roman Catholics. Moreover, in Prance’s version of the murder Godfrey was dogged, drawn into the yard at Somerset House and there beaten and strangled near the stables with a twisted handkerchief. The body was then put in a room in Dr Goddin’s lodgings. In Prance’s version the murder took place between 9 and 10 o’clock at night, with the body subsequently stored in various places before the comical moves by sedan chair and horse to a place Prance knew very well – Primrose Hill.63

  Although Prance’s tale differed considerably from Bedloe’s, both were used in the trial. In the trial Prance performed well, but there the king’s counsel and the judge protected him. Later on Prance supported some of Oates’s statements in a number of other trials. By 1686, however, Prance had finally admitted his perjury. He said that he had been lying all along and as a result he was punished by a fine of £100, and sentenced to be pilloried and whipped. Strangely enough, the latter part of the sentence was not carried out. Indeed, the next time Prance appeared was as an escapee in the company of some Jesuits in December 1688. Captured off Gravesend, he was sent up for further examination, but it is probable that he ultimately found his way into Europe and lived there until his death.

  Prance’s tale is full of improbabilities. Pollock saw him as the shrewd man trying to protect his fellow killers by placing the blame for the crime on innocent men.64 But once again we must remember that here we have an account of a crime taking place in a royal palace. Indeed Prance set his murder in an open yard, where even at 9 o’clock at night there would have still have been lot of comings and goings by grooms and stable folk about their business. In addition, the king himself later remembered that both he and his court had actually been at the palace that night. This appears to ruin the whole tale completely. Charles II’s court, though lax at times, was still heavily guarded. Nor does Prance’s tale really explain away the presence of guards at the palace gate, whom he largely ignored. Moreover, the amateurish activities of the murderers seem to have been created merely to explain why the body did not appear in the ditch before Thursday. In addition, Somerset House was next door to the Savoy, a place that had already been the focus for Oates and his guards. They had already made a number of arrests of people who lived there. It is entirely possible that Somerset House was itself already under observation. In any case it would have been extremely risky for the killers to take the body out of the palace’s most minor doors. An overofficious guard or a tipsy reveller could have spelled disaster. Prance’s tale was believed, however, or was used simply because the government had no one else at hand except the dubious Bedloe and wanted to placate a disaffected parliament and country. Not for the first time was the regime of Charles II willing to sacrifice innocent men to calm a troublesome nation.

  If Prance and Bedloe were lying, are there any alternative scenarios to implicate the Catholic community and Jesuits in London? It has been suggested that a group of worried Roman Catholics, hearing of Edmund Godfrey’s part in the affair, decided to eliminate him from the scene. Yet why kill a man, a magistrate indeed, just at the point when rumours of a Popish Plot were flying about London and when his death would bring down the wrath of the Protestant nation on the head of the Roman Catholic community? It
could, of course, have been a simple miscalculation – history is full of mistakes and miscalculations of this sort. Yet, on the other hand, although there is no extant evidence that Godfrey was making inquires of his own among the Catholics after the visit of Oates and Tonge to his home, he may well have taken (as was his custom in other cases) to probing just a little too deeply into the Popish Plot. Fearful that Godfrey might uncover still more incriminating evidence, or even manufacture some, a group of overzealous Catholics may well have miscalculated: they may have had him murdered. Some were to make just such a miscalculation when fed the Meal Tub fiasco in 1679 by the informer Thomas Dangerfield. This scheme to bring discredit upon the Whigs and blame the origin of the Popish Plot upon them misfired spectacularly.65 An alternative, of course, is that Edmund Godfrey really did have access to a great secret and therefore had to be killed. Was this, as some have claimed, Coleman’s information about the secret meeting of the Jesuits at St James’s Palace or other evidence that a plot existed? As we have seen, it is unlikely. Alternatively, did the Catholics wish to kill Godfrey because in their minds he had become associated with Oates and Tonge? This version of events could perhaps explain his death. It is always possible that a group of foolish men, fuelled by scare stories, arrests and alarms, who thought they were doing the right thing in removing an officious troublesome enemy of the church, killed him and made a clumsy attempt to make the whole affair look like suicide by his own sword. They would only have discovered their mistake after his death. This is a plausible tale. But there is yet another simpler and more logical alternative.

  ‘OH THIS IS MY BROTHER GODFREY!’: MICHAEL AND BENJAMIN GODFREY

  To most mysteries there is a simple – and logical – solution if one knows where to look. This is medieval philosopher William of Ockham’s razor: ‘No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary’.66 We know that Godfrey’s involvement in the Popish Plot was to cost him dearly, but it is in his personal life that the real solution to the mystery of his death may well lie. For here we find the magistrate already subject to bouts of melancholy, with Tonge and Oates on his doorstep informing him of tales of a serious plot. Edmund Godfrey’s actions thereafter smack of someone in a state of acute depression. His subsequent errors in dealing with their evidence soon piled up against him: Godfrey’s keeping the whole affair secret, when it would have been much more sensible to go to the secretary of state and lay any evidence before higher authorities; his urgent discussions with Edward Coleman; his appearing gloomy at Lady Pratt’s house and elsewhere; his fears of persecution by some ‘great persons’; his fears of being punished for his alleged wrong doing; his fears of being the ‘first martyr’. The alleged burning of his papers on the Friday evening and his actions on the Saturday morning until he left the yard at Hartshorne Lane at around 9 o’clock were the actions of a worried man. After asking directions to Primrose Hill that Saturday morning, wandering around in a state of distress for some hours unable to decide what he wished to do, he finally arrived at a solution: Edmund Godfrey committed suicide by self-strangulation near Primrose Hill. The forensic evidence showed the wounds to his breast as having been inflicted after his death and thus he could not, as Alfred Marks once argued, have fallen upon his own sword. The ‘bruises’ on the body could just be explained by post-mortem lividity. The answer to the mystery that supplies itself, then, is that of self-strangulation. This at least has the merit of fitting the forensic evidence in some way. It must be agreed that it remains an odd method of death, but it does, of course, place the demise of Godfrey where it was always most likely to lie: with the man himself.

  Suicidal strangulation could be effected by the victim tying and tightening a ligature, often in a double knot, or with the ligature wound around the neck more than once. The ligature would need to be tied at one end to ensure that the pressure on the neck was maintained even when the victim had passed into unconsciousness. A convenient tree would seem most suitable for this purpose. The investigators of a Victorian murder case at Chelmsford Assizes in 1851, however, made a number of illuminating judgements on this matter. In the course of that nineteenth-century affair they found that in some cases the two ends of a suitably coiled and knotted cord, with both of the ends held tight or coiled around the hands, could enable a person to commit suicide. A ligature placed tightly around the neck would produce almost immediate insensibility, and also a loss of muscular power. A.S. Taylor cited the case of two men who had succeeded in committing suicide in such a manner and also the selfexperiments of one Dr Fleischman as to the most suitable places to put the actual ligature. Fleischman’s final horrifying description of the effects of this form of death form a coda to the strange death of Edmund Godfrey: ‘The face becomes red, and the eyes congested, and protruding; the head feels hot, there is a sense of weight followed by vertigo, and there is a sudden hissing noise in the ears. This last is a symptom of impending danger, and unless the experiment be discontinued at this time, the result will be fatal.’67

  So suicidal strangulation can occur in exceptional circumstances. The puzzle in the Godfrey case could only have been resolved by a minute examination of the victim’s hands and neck. The investigating surgeons appear to have done their best in trying circumstances, but of course Godfrey’s body, while it had marks around the neck that could possibly agree with such a death, had no actual ligature in place when it was discovered. Indeed, both his band and cravat were also missing. In addition his sword had been passed though his body. How do we resolve this final problem? The only way forward is that someone removed the ligature and someone pushed the sword into him after his death.68

  At which point we must of necessity speculate still further. Our first speculation is that Henry Moor, Godfrey’s clerk, did indeed find his master’s body on the Sunday. What would he do? Given what we now know of his character and actions in the course of this crisis, there seems little doubt that he would have tried to cover the crime up. Moreover, he would have immediately contacted Godfrey’s two brothers. This was a family matter; the shame of suicide should not be underestimated and his master’s estate would probably have been forfeited because of it. With Michael and Benjamin in charge, however, the body could be shifted to a safe place while the Godfrey brothers and Moor decided what to do next. The two prominent businessmen could easily have found the opportunity and means to shift their brother’s body in secret had they set their mind to it. Did they consult with others on the matter? This seems unlikely. Michael was a strong and independent character; it was more logical that the affair would have been kept in the family, much as it seems their own father’s serious illnesses may have been. The brothers’ subsequent haste in visiting the Privy Council and their fervent accusations against the Roman Catholics are therefore explained as a device to allow them time to cover up a suicide. It was not until Wednesday that they dared to move the body back to Primrose Hill, and lay it there in such a way that implications of suicide would soon be discounted and blame laid upon the Roman Catholics. It had to be made to look like a clumsy killing. Hence the sword that was nervously pushed through the body not once but twice. The body was then pushed into the ditch with its face covered, almost as if they could not bear to see Edmund’s accusing eyes. It may also have been placed there with the hope that perhaps by the time it was found putrefaction would have set in and any traces of suicide would consequently have disappeared. Once the body was found, it was also essential that the conclusion be reached that Edmund must have been murdered. Hence the brothers’ interference with the coroner and the arguments about the opening of the body. A surgeon, Dr Skillarne, was brought in by Michael Godfrey to do the work and was used to sway a rather confused jury.

  If this had been merely a family affair, then little would have come of it in the end. Many a time coroner’s juries had brought in a verdict of misadventure to save the family and estate from shame.69 But here there were political overtones, and Michael knew this. His connections with the City
opposition and Shaftesbury would have swiftly informed him of the dangers and opportunities in his brother’s death. He also knew of the problems facing such men in this crisis. His foolish brother Edmund was to be the sacrifice to a greater cause and to be honoured as a Whig martyr rather than a damned suicide. Edmund Godfrey could not just be allowed to have killed himself because those who had most to gain from his death wanted to have him as a martyr to their greater cause, whatever that was: Shaftesbury, and his client Oates, to keep up the plot; Bedloe to collect the reward; and Prance because he had no choice. The government had a murdered magistrate foisted upon it because it had no choice; the courts needed a murdered magistrate because three men had to die to solve the riddle of the Popish Plot. Thus a death in the family became a national crisis and proof of a plot; the real reason for the melancholic Godfrey’s death became ignored.

  This scenario of Godfrey’s demise has the merit of at least being relatively simple. But is it plausible? The Godfrey brothers, serious businessmen who were prominent in London, would not wish to see the estate forfeited and the family disgraced because of their brother’s suicide. Certainly Henry Moor could have been kept quiet. If we believe Mrs Gibbon, who claimed to know Godfrey better than most, she also was asked to keep quiet about Edmund’s state of mind prior to his death by the Godfrey family. Moreover, the Godfrey brothers had the necessary connections and the apparent motives to perform the deed. We do know that Moor appears to have lied throughout this escapade, that he was searching near Primrose Hill on the Sunday or Monday, that Judith Pamphlin thought he knew something more than he told her. Nor was Moor called to the trial, although he was at the coroner’s inquest to give the slightest possible evidence as to when his master left the house. Naturally he was at the hearing in the company of Michael and Benjamin Godfrey. That the coroner’s inquest lasted far longer than it should have done given a supposedly obvious case of murder was also unusual. As we have seen, in reality it was a chaotic affair which began in a crowd and then adjourned to another venue where a group of rather bemused jurors had to be persuaded and even cajoled (if we are to believe some sources) to bringing a verdict of murder.