The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies

Again, Prance, by misstating dates wildly, hoped, says Mr. Pollock, to escape as a mere liar.* But, when Prance varied in almost every detail of time, place, motive, and person from Bedloe, Mr. Pollock does not see that his own explanation holds for the variations. If Prance wished to escape as a babbling liar, he could not do better than contradict Bedloe. He DID, but the Protestant conscience swallowed the contradictions. But again, if Prance did not know the details of Bedloe’s confession, how could he possibly agree with it?

*Pollock, p. 160.

The most essential point of difference was that Bedloe accused ‘Jesuits,’ Le Fevre, Walsh, and Pritchard, who had got clean away. Prance accused two priests, who escaped, and three hangers on of Somerset House, Hill, Berry (the porter), and Green. All three were hanged, and all three confessedly were innocent. Mr. Pollock reasons that Prance, if guilty (and he believes him guilty), ‘must have known the real authors’ of the crime, that is, the Jesuits accused by Bedloe. ‘He must have accused the innocent, not from necessity, but from choice, and in order to conceal the guilty.’ ‘He knew Bedloe to have exposed the real murderers, and… he wished to shield them.‘* How did he know whom Bedloe had exposed? How could he even know the exact spot, a room in Somerset House, where Bedloe placed the murder? Prance placed it in Somerset YARD.

*Pollock, p. 148.

It is just as easy to argue, on Mr. Pollock’s other line, that Prance varied from Bedloe in order that the inconsistencies might prove his own falsehood. But we have no reason to suppose that Prance did know the details of Bedloe’s confession, as to the motive of the murder, the hour, the exact spot, and the names of the criminals. Later he told L’Estrange a palpable lie: Bedloe’s confession had been shown to him before he made his own. If that were true, he purposely contradicted Bedloe in detail. But Mr. Pollock rejects the myth. Then how did Prance know the details given by Bedloe?* Ignorant of Bedloe’s version, except in two or three points, Prance could not but contradict it. He thus could not accuse Bedloe’s Jesuits. He did not name other men, as Mr. Pollock holds, to shield the Jesuits. Practically they did not need to be shielded. Jesuits with seven weeks’ start of the law were safe enough. Even if they were caught, were guilty, and had the truth extracted from them, involving Prance, the truth about HIM would come out, whether he now denounced them or not. But he did not know that Bedloe had denounced them.

*Pollock, pp. 142, 143.

Mr. Pollock’s theory of the relation of Bedloe to Godfrey’s murder is this: Bedloe had no hand in the murder, and never saw the corpse. The crime was done in Somerset House, ‘the Queen’s confessor,’ Father Le Fevre, S.J., having singular facilities for entering, with his friends, and carrying a dead body out ‘through a private door’ – a door not mentioned by any witnesses, nor proved to exist by the evidence of a chart. This Le Fevre, with Walsh, lived in the same house as Bedloe. From them, Bedloe got his information. ‘It is easy to conjecture how he could have obtained it. Walsh and Le Fevre were absent from their rooms, for a considerable part of the nights of Saturday and Wednesday, October 12 and 16. Bedloe’s suspicions must have been aroused, and, either by threats or cajolery, he wormed part of the secret out of his friends. He obtained a general idea of the way in which the murder had been committed and of the persons concerned in it. One of these was a frequenter of the Queen’s chapel whom he knew by sight. He thought him to be a subordinate official there.‘*

*Pollock, pp. 157, 158.

On this amount of evidence Bedloe invented his many contradictions. Why he did not cleave to the facts imparted to him by his Jesuit friends, we do not learn. ‘A general idea of the way in which the murder was committed’ any man could form from the state of Godfrey’s body. There was no reason why Walsh and Le Fevre ‘should be absent from their rooms on a considerable part of the night of Saturday 12,’ and so excite Bedloe’s suspicions, for, on his versions, they slew Godfrey at 2 P.M., 5 P.M., or any hour between. No proof is given that they were in their lodgings, or in London, during the fortnight which followed Oates’s three successful Jesuit drives of September 28-30. In all probability they had fled from London before Godfrey’s murder. No evidence can I find that Bedloe’s Jesuits were at their lodgings on October 12-16. They were not sought for there, but at Somerset House.* Two sisters, named Salvin, were called before the Lords’ Committee, and deposed that Bedloe and Le Fevre had twice been at their house when Walsh said mass there.**

*Lords’ Journals, xiii. pp. 343 346.

**Ibid. p. 353.

That is all! Bedloe had some acquaintance with the men he accused; so had Prance with those he denounced. Prance’s victims were innocent, and against Bedloe’s there is not, so far, evidence to convict a cat on for stealing cream. He recognised Prance, therefore he really knew the murderers – that is all the argument.

Mr. Pollock’s theory reposes on the belief, rejected by L’Estrange, that the Jesuits ‘were the damnedest fools.’ Suppose them guilty. The first step of a Jesuit, or of any gentleman, about to commit a deliberate deeply planned murder, is to secure an alibi. Le Fevre did not, or, when questioned (on Mr. Pollock’s theory) by Bedloe, he would have put him off with his alibi. Again, ‘a Jesuit,’ ‘the Queen’s confessor,’ does not do his murders in the Queen’s house: no gentleman does. But, if Le Fevre did commit this solecism, he would have told Bedloe a different story; if he confessed to him at all. These things are elementary.

Prance’s confession, as to the share of Hill, Berry, and Green in the murder, was admittedly false. On one point he stumbled always: ‘Were there no guards at the usual places at the time of the carrying on this work?’ he was asked by one of the Lords on December 24,1678. He mumbled, ‘I did not take notice of any.‘* He never, on later occasions, could answer this question about the sentries. Prance saw no sentries, and there is nowhere any evidence that the sentries were ever asked whether they saw either Prance, Le Fevre, or Godfrey, in Somerset House or the adjacent Somerset Yard, on October 12. They were likely to know both the Queen’s silversmith and ‘the Queen’s confessor,’ and Godfrey they may have known. Prance and the sentries had, for each other, the secret of fern-seed, they walked invisible. This, of itself, is fatal to Prance’s legend.

*Lords’ Journals, xiii. p. 438.

No sooner had Prance confessed than he withdrew his confession. He prayed to be taken before the King, knelt, and denied all. Next day he did the same before the Council. He was restored to his pleasant quarters in Newgate, and recanted his recantation. He again withdrew, and maintained that his confession was false, before King and Council (December 30), ‘He knows nothing in the world of all he has said.’ The Lord Chancellor proposed ‘to have him have the rack.‘*

*State Papers, Domestic, Charles II., Dec. 30, 1678, Bundle 408.

Probably he ‘did not have the rack,’ but he had the promise of it, and nearly died of cold, ironed, in the condemned cell. ‘He was almost dead with the disorder in his mind, and with cold in his body,’ said Dr. Lloyd, who visited him, to Burnet. Lloyd got a bed and a fire for the wretch, who revived, and repeated his original confession.* Lloyd believed in his sincerity, says Burnet, writing many years later. In 1686, Lloyd denied that he believed.

*Burnet, ii. p. 773.

Prance’s victims, Hill, Berry, and Green, were tried on February 5, 1679. Prance told his story. On one essential point he professed to know nothing. Where was Godfrey from five to nine o’clock, the hour when he was lured into Somerset House? He was dogged in fields near Holborn to somewhere unknown in St. Clement’s. It is an odd fact that, though at the dinner hour, one o’clock, close to his own house, and to that of Mr. Welden (who had asked him to dine), Sir Edmund seems to have dined nowhere. Had he done so, even in a tavern, he must have been recognised. Probably Godfrey was dead long before 9 P.M. Mr. Justice Wild pressed Prance on this point of where Godfrey was; he could say nothing.* Much evidence (on one point absurd) was collected later by L’Estrange, and is accepted by North in his ‘Examen,’ to prove that, by some of his friends, Godfrey was reckoned ‘missing’ in the afternoon of the fatal Saturday.** But no such evidence was wanted when Hill, Berry, and Green were tried.*** The prosecution, with reckless impudence, mingled Bedloe’s and Prance’s contradictory lies, and accused Bedloe’s ‘Jesuits,’ Walsh and Le Fevre, in company with Prance’s priests, Gerald and Kelly.**** Bedloe, in his story before the jury, involved himself in even more contradictory lies than usual. But, even now, he did not say anything that really implicated the men accused by Prance, while Prance said not a word, in Court or elsewhere, about the men accused by Bedloe.*****

*State Trials, vii. 177.

**This is said in 1681 in A Letter to Miles Prance.

***North, Examen, p. 201.

****State Trials, vii, 178 (Speech of Serjeant Stringer).

Lord Chief Justice Scroggs actually told the jury that ‘for two witnesses to agree as to many material circumstances with one another, that had never conversed together, is impossible… They agree so in all things.‘* The two witnesses did not agree at all, as we have abundantly seen, but, in the fury of Protestant fear, any injustice could be committed, and every kind of injustice was committed at this trial. Prance later pleaded guilty on a charge of perjury, and well he might. Bedloe died, and went to his own place with lies in his mouth.

*State Trials, vii. 216.

5

If I held a brief against the Jesuits, I should make much of a point which Mr. Pollock does not labour. Just about the time when Prance began confessing, in London, December 24, 1678, one Stephen Dugdale, styled ‘gentleman,’ was arrested in Staffordshire, examined, and sent up to town. He was a Catholic, and had been in Lord Aston’s service, but was dismissed for dishonesty. In the country, at Tixall, he knew a Jesuit named Evers, and through Evers he professed to know much about the mythical plot to kill the King, and the rest of the farrago of lies. At the trial of the five Jesuits, in June 1679, Dugdale told what he had told privately, under examination, on March 21, 1679.* This revelation was that Harcourt, a Jesuit, had written from town to Evers, a Jesuit at Tixall, by the night post of Saturday, October 12, 1678, ‘This very night Sir Edmundbury (sic) Godfrey is dispatched.’ The letter reached Tixall by Monday, October 14.

*Fitzherbert MSS; State Trials, vii. 338.

Mr. Pollock writes: ‘Dugdale was proved to have spoken on Tuesday, October 15, 1678, of the death of a justice of the peace in Westminster, which does not go far.‘* But if this is PROVED, it appears to go all the way; unless we can explain Dugdale’s information without involving the guilty knowledge of Harcourt. The proof that Dugdale, on Tuesday, October 15, spoke at Tixall of Godfrey’s death, two days before Godfrey’s body was found near London, stands thus: at the trial of the Jesuits a gentleman, Chetwyn, gave evidence that, on the morning of Tuesday, October 15, a Mr. Sanbidge told him that Dugdale had talked at an alehouse about the slaying of a justice of peace of Westminster. Chetwyn was certain of the date, because on that day he went to Litchfield races. At Litchfield he stayed till Saturday, October 19, when he heard from London of the discovery of Godfrey’s body.** Chetwyn asked Dugdale about this, when Dugdale was sent to town, in December 1678. Dugdale said he remembered the facts, but, as he did not report them to his examiners (a singular omission), he was not called as a witness at the trial of Berry, Green, and Hill. Chetwyn later asked Dugdale why he was not called, and said: ‘Pray let me see the copy of your deposition sworn before the Council. He showed it me, and there was not a syllable of it, that I could see, BUT AFTERWARDS IT APPEARED TO BE THERE.’

*Pollock, p. 341, note 2.

**State Trials, vii. 339, 341,

Lord Chief Justice. ‘That is not very material, if the thing itself be true.’

Chetwyn. ‘But its not being there made me remember it.’

Its later appearance, ‘there,’ shows how depositions were handled!

Chetwyn, in June 1679, says that he heard of Dugdale’s words as to the murder, from Mr. Sanbidge, or Sambidge, or Sawbridge. At the trial of Lord Stafford (1680) Sanbidge ‘took it upon his salvation’ that Dugdale told him nothing of the matter, and vowed that Dugdale was a wicked rogue.* Mr. Wilson, the parish clergyman of Tixall, was said to have heard Dugdale speak of Godfrey’s death on October 14. He also remembered no such thing. Hanson, a running-man, heard Dugdale talk of the murder of a justice of the peace at Westminster as early as the morning of Monday, October 14, 1678: the London Saturday post arrived at Tixall on Monday morning. Two gentlemen, Birch and Turton, averred that the news of the murder ‘was all over the country’ near Tixall, on Tuesday, October 15; but Turton was not sure that he did not hear first of the fact on Friday, October 18, which, by ordinary post from London, was impossible.

*State Trials, vii. 1406.

Such was the evidence to show that Dugdale spoke of Godfrey’s death, in the country, two or three days before Godfrey’s body was found. The fact can scarcely be said to be PROVED, considering the excitement of men’s minds, the fallacies of memory, the silence of Dugdale at his first examination before the Council, Sanbidge’s refusal to corroborate Chetwyn, and Wilson’s inability to remember anything about a matter so remarkable and so recent. To deny, like Sanbidge, to be unable to remember, like Wilson, demanded some courage, in face of the frenzied terror of the Protestants. Birch confessedly took no notice of the rumour, when it first reached him, but at the trial of Green, Berry, and Hill, ‘I told several gentlemen that I did perfectly remember before Thursday it was discoursed of in the country by several gentlemen where I lived.‘* The ‘several gentlemen’ whom Birch ‘told’ were not called to corroborate him. In short, the evidence seems to fall short of demonstrative proof.

*State Trials. vii. 1455.

But, if it were all true, L’Estrange (and a writer who made the assertion in 1681) collected a good deal of evidence* to show that a rumour of Godfrey’s disappearance, and probable murder by bloody Papists, was current in London on the afternoon of the day when he disappeared, Saturday, October 12.*** Mr. Pollock says that the evidence is ‘not to be relied on,’ and part of it, attributing the rumour to Godfrey’s brothers, is absurd. THEY were afraid that Godfrey had killed himself, not that he was murdered by Papists. That ‘his household could not have known that he would not return,’ is not to the point. The people who raised the rumour were not of Godfrey’s household. Nor is it to the point, exactly, that, being invited to dine on Saturday by Mr. Welden, who saw him on Friday night, ‘he said he could not tell whether he should.‘** For Wynell had expected to dine with him at Welden’s to talk over some private business about house property.*** Wynell (the authority for Godfrey’s being ‘master of a dangerous secret’) did expect to meet Godfrey at dinner, and, knowing the fears to which Godfrey often confessed, might himself have originated, by his fussy inquiries, the rumour that Sir Edmund was missing. The wild excitement of the town might add ‘murdered by Papists,’ and the rumour might really get into a letter from London of Saturday night, reaching Tixall by Monday morning. North says: ‘It was in every one’s mouth, WHERE IS GODFREY? HE HAS NOT BEEN AT HIS HOUSE ALL THIS DAY, THEY SAY HE IS MURDERED BY THE PAPISTS.‘**** That such a pheemee might arise is very conceivable. In all probability the report which Bishop Burnet and Dr. Lloyd heard of the discovery of Godfrey’s body, before it was discovered, was another rumour, based on a lucky conjecture. It is said that the report of the fall of Khartoum was current in Cairo on the day of the unhappy event. Rumour is correct once in a myriad times, and, in October 1678, London was humming with rumours. THIS report might get into a letter to Tixall, and, if so, Dugdale’s early knowledge is accounted for; if knowledge he had, which I have shown to be disputable.

*Letter to Miles Prance, March, 1681. L’Estrange, Brief History, iii. pp. 195-201.

**Lords’ MSS., p. 48; Pollock, p. 93, and note 2.

***L’Estrange, Brief History, iii. pp. 188, 190, 195.

****Examen, p. 201. Anglicised version of the author’s original Greek text.

Dugdale’s talk was thought, at the time, to clinch the demonstration that the Jesuits were concerned in Godfrey’s murder, L’Estrange says, and he brings in his witnesses to prove, that the London rumour existed, and could reach the country by post. In fact, Chetwyn, on the evidence of Sanbidge, suggested this improvement of his original romance to Dugdale, and Sanbidge contradicted Chetwyn. He knew nothing of the matter. Such is the value of the only testimony against the Jesuits which deserves consideration.

We do not propose to unriddle this mystery, but to show that the most recent and industrious endeavour to solve the problem is unsuccessful. We cannot deny that Godfrey may have been murdered to conceal Catholic secrets, of which, thanks to his inexplicable familiarity with Coleman, he may have had many. But we have tried to prove that we do not KNOW him to have had any such Catholic secrets, or much beyond Oates’s fables; and we have probably succeeded in showing that against the Jesuits, as Sir Edmund’s destroyers, there is no evidence at all.

Had modern men of science, unaffected by political and religious bias, given evidence equivalent to that of the two surgeons, one might conceive that Godfrey was probably slain, as Macaulay thought, by hotheaded Catholics. But I confess to a leaning in favour of the picture of Godfrey sketched by L’Estrange; of the man confessing to hereditary melancholy; fretted and alarmed by the tracasseries and perils of his own position, alarming his friends and endangering himself by his gloomy hints; settling, on the last night of his life (Friday, October 11), with morbid anxiety, some details of a parish charity founded by himself; uncertain as to whether he can dine with Welden (at about one) next day; seen at that very hour near his own house, yet dining nowhere; said to have roamed, before that hour, to Paddington Woods and back again; seen vaguely, perhaps, wandering near Primrose Hill in the afternoon, and found dead five days later in the bush-covered ditch near Primrose Hill, his own sword through his breast and back, his body in the attitude of one who had died a Roman death.

Between us and that conclusion – suicide caused by fear – nothing stands but the surgical evidence, and the grounds of that evidence are disputed.

Surgical evidence, however, is a fact ‘that winna ding,’ and I do not rely on the theory of suicide. But, if Godfrey was murdered by Catholics, it seems odd that nobody has suggested, as the probable scene, the Savoy, which lay next on the right to Somerset Yard. The Savoy, so well described by Scott in Peveril of the Peak, and by Macaulay, was by this time a rambling, ruinous, labyrinth of lanes and dilapidated dwellings, tenanted by adventurers and skulking Catholics. It was an Alsatia, says Macaulay, more dangerous than the Bog of Allen, or the passes of the Grampians. A courageous magistrate might be lured into the Savoy to stop a fight, or on any similar pretence; and, once within a rambling old dwelling of the Hospital, would be in far greater peril than in the Queen’s guarded residence. Catholic adventurers might here destroy Godfrey, either for his alleged zeal, or to seize his papers, or because he, so great a friend of Catholics as he was, might know too much. The body could much more easily be removed, perhaps by water, from the Savoy, than from the guarded gates of Somerset House. Oates knew the Savoy, and said falsely that he had met Coleman there.* If murder was done, the Savoy was as good a place for the deed as the Forest of Bondy.

*State Trials, vii. 28.

* * *NOTE I. CHARLES II. AND GODFREY’S DEATH

The Duke of York, speaking of Bedloe’s evidence before the Lords (November 8), says, ‘Upon recollection the King remembered he was at Sommerset House himself, at the very time he swore the murder was committed:… his having been there at that time himself, made it impossible that a man should be assaulted in the Court, murder’d, and hurryd into the backstairs, when there was a Centry at every door, a foot Company on the Guard, and yet nobody see or knew anything of it.* Now evidence was brought that, at 5 P.M. on Saturday, October 12, the Queen decided to be ‘not at home.’ But Bedloe placed the murder as early as 2 P.M., sometimes, and between two o’clock and five o’clock the King may, as the Duke of York says, have been at Somerset House. Reresby, in his diary, for November 21, 1678, says that the King told him on that day that he was ‘satisfied’ Bedloe had given false evidence as to Godfrey’s murder. The Duke of York probably repeats the King’s grounds for this opinion. Charles also knew that the room selected by Bedloe as the scene of the deed was impossible.

Life of James II, i. pp. 527, 528.

NOTE II. PRANCE AND THE WHITE HOUSE CLUB

The body of Godfrey was found in a ditch near the White House Tavern, and that tavern was used as a club by a set of Catholic tradesmen. Was Prance a member? The landlord, Rawson, on October 24, mentioned as a member ‘Mr. PRINCE, a silversmith in Holborn.’ Mr. PRANCE was a silversmith in Covent Garden. On December 21, Prance said that he had not seen Rawson for a year; he was asked about Rawson. The members of the club met at the White House during the sitting of the coroner’s inquest there, on Friday, October 18. Prance, according to the author of ‘A Letter to Miles Prance,’ was present. He may have been a member, he may have known the useful ditch where Godfrey’s corpse was found, but this does not rise beyond the value of conjecture.*

*Lords’ MSS. pp. 46, 47, 51.

NOTE III. THE JESUIT MURDERERS

There is difficulty in identifying as Jesuits the ‘Jesuits’ accused by Bedloe. The chief is ‘Father Le Herry,’ * called ‘Le Ferry’ by Mr. Pollock and Mr. Foley. He also appears as Le Faire, Lee Phaire, Le Fere, but usually Le Fevre, in the documents. There really was a priest styled Le Fevre. A man named Mark Preston was accused of being a priest and a Jesuit. When arrested he declared that he was a married layman with a family. He had been married in Mr. Langhorne’s rooms, in the Temple, by Le Fevre, a priest, in 1667, or, at least, about eleven years before 1678.** I cannot find that Le Fevre was known as a Jesuit to the English members of the Society. He is not in Oates’s list of conspirators. He does not occur in Foley’s ‘Records,’ vol. v., a very painstaking work. Nor would he be omitted because accused of a crime, rather he would be reckoned as more or less of a martyr, like the other Fathers implicated by the informers. The author of ‘Florus Anglo-Bavaricus’ *** names ‘Pharius’ (Le Phaire), ‘Valschius’ (Walsh), and ‘Atkinsus,’ as denounced by Bedloe, but clearly knows nothing about them. ‘Atkinsus’ is Mr. Pepys’s clerk, Samuel Atkins, who had an alibi. Valschius is Walsh, certainly a priest, but not to be found in Foley’s ‘Records’ as a Jesuit.

*Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 11055, 245.

**Lords’ Journals, xiii. 331, 332. Lords’ MSS., p. 99.

***Liege, 1685, p. 137.

That Le Fevre was the Queen’s confessor I find no proof. But she had a priest named Ferrera, who might be confused with Le Faire.* He was accused of calling a waterman to help to take two persons down the river on November 6, 1678. He was summoned before the Lords, but we do not know that he came. Ferrera MAY have been the Queen’s confessor, he was ‘one of the Queen’s priests.’ In 1670 she had twenty-eight priests as chaplains; twelve were Portuguese Capuchins, six were Benedictines, two, Dominicans, and the rest seculars.** Mrs. Prance admitted that she knew ‘Mr. Le Phaire, and that he went for a priest.‘*** Of Le Fevre, ‘Jesuit’ and ‘Queens confessor,’ I know no more.

*Lords’ MSS., p. 49.

**Maziere Brady, Episcopal Succession in England, p. 124 (1876).

***Lords’ MSS p. 52.