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- [00:01]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
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- [00:35]
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- [01:11]
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- [02:11]
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- [02:31]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to Samurais relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely all Also the Tudors. In the autumn of 1678, on the edge of a London field, a body was found lying in a ditch. It belonged to Sir Edmund Barry Godfrey, a magistrate known more for his diligence than for notoriety. Yet in death, he would become the centre of one of the most explosive mysteries in English history. His killing did not settle quietly into the records of crime. Instead, it ignited a storm of fear, accusation and conspiracy that would grip the nation for years. Godfrey's story unfolds in a world already primed for panic. England was in the throes of the so called Popish Plot. They claimed that Catholics were preparing to assassinate King Charles II and overthrow the Protestant state. As a magistrate, Godfrey had taken the initial depositions when he disappeared and then reappeared as a corpse. Marked by violence, his death seemed to confirm the worst fears of a country on edge. But Godfrey was not a simple victim. He was a man who moved uneasily between factions trusted by Protestant distance and Catholic recusants alike. A magistrate who investigated, mediated and perhaps knew too much. His death quickly became more than a murder. It was evidence, weapon and symbol all at once, seized upon by politicians, pamphleteers and a public desperate for answers. In this episode of our Not Just the Tudors True Crime strand, we're joined by historian Andrea McKenzie, whose research reopens the case with striking clarity and complexity. Drawing on new, newly deciphered letters, secret correspondence and overlooked archives, she challenges the familiar explanations, whether suicide, Catholic assassination or convenient scapegoating, and instead reveals a darker, more entangled story of espionage, factional rivalry and dangerous knowledge. This is not just a question of who killed Godfrey, but of how a nation came to believe what. What it did. In a world of coded messages, shifting loyalties and political theater, truth itself became unstable and the consequences were deadly. I'm Professor Susanne Lipscomb, welcome to Not Just the Tutors from History Hit. Andrea, welcome to the podcast.
- [05:36]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
Thanks so much. Great to be here.
- [05:38]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It's great to have a chance to talk about this with you because as we get towards the end of the 17th century, my understanding of things, my knowledge gets a little ropey. So I'm delighted to have somebody to guide me through this and perhaps that's where we should start. What did the English political landscape look like in the 1670s? What's the context that listeners need to understand about what England was like in this period?
- [06:03]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
Yeah, I think we're all familiar with the notion of the merry monarch and how Charles II was welcomed in 1660 when he returned to take the throne. But I Think we forget that by the 1670s, that popularity is gone. So we have historians who grapple with why it was that a parliament of courtiers that was so loyal royalists that they were dubbed the Cavalier Parliament, became, by the 1670s, a parliament of critics. So by the 1670s, you have a succession crisis that has been long in the making. Charles, for all that he's notorious for siring a string of illegitimate children with various mostly Catholic mistresses, had no legitimate offspring. This brings us to a crisis which is simmering on the back burner in the late 1660s, but by 1678 is really starting to come to a full boil, especially because his logical and assumed heir is his brother James, Duke of York, who effectively is, to use modern parlance, is outed as a Catholic in 1673 with the test Act.
- [07:18]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So what kind of things are happening?
- [07:20]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
There's all kinds of things going on relating to anxieties about the succession. And it's exacerbated both by James's Catholicism, but also the rising power of France. And Louis XIV is this expansionist Catholic monarch who's seen as a threat to Protestants on the Continent. There's this anxiety, anxiety about Catholicism being an existential threat to English Protestants as well in the English nation. So in 1678, there's been years of murmuring and discontent in Parliament. There's really what you can call an opposition beginning to take shape. In 1677, several critics of the court, including the Earl of Shaftesbury and the Duke of Buckingham, are thrown in the Tower of London for essentially invoking a medieval statute that claimed that a Parliament that was so repeatedly prorogued and did not sit on a regular basis was effectively illegal and defunct. So you have an increasingly restive and discontented Parliament pushing back against Charles and his ministers, and also the. The King's chief minister, the Earl of Danby, is widely suspected by not just opponents in Parliament, but I think the political nation more broadly, that he's trying to put together a standing army, essentially on the basis of money that had been voted by Parliament to fight against France or to defend fortresses on the Continent against France, that money has been channeled into soldiers, that the King might be able to use views against his own subjects.
- [09:09]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And so you've given me a sense about this anxiety about Catholic overthrow that perhaps is a start of an answer to this question about the Popish Plot, which was a fabricated conspiracy, although it had real and tragic consequences. How did a lie like that take hold so firmly in 17th century England?
- [09:33]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
Titus OATES allegations were indeed fabricated to a large part, but they resonated with people, in part because they were a continuation of a familiar narrative and an anti Catholic narrative, but because there was some truth to some of the allegations, or at least the spirit, if not the substance of the allegations. And indeed, one thing that becomes problematic from the very beginning is that Titus Oates starts off with 43 heads of accusations. It's an unbearably dull document. His allegations, Catholic after Catholic, accused of trying to put together an army assassinating the King. But in the 43rd or 44th article, the name of the King's brother's secretary, technically he was the Duchess of York's secretary, but everyone knew that Edward Colman was in fact the client and the loyal servant of the Duke of York, the King's brother. And he was a Catholic convert who was very zealous in the cause and was active in corresponding with various French and papal agents, trying to raise money to bribe people in Parliament to bring about a dissolution of the very Anglican Cavalier Parliament in the hopes that a parliament more favourable to toleration could be elected. Effectively, he was trying to collude with foreign governments to meddle in English domestic affairs. This was a real crime and it really was going on.
- [11:11]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So how would Titus Oates have got the information about Coleman?
- [11:14]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
I think we can be reasonably certain that it was the King's minister, the Earl of Danby, that fed him that information. The Earl of Danby had been at long at odds with Colman, who wrote newsletters to promote his own political agenda and who had come to be very critical of the government. Danby thought that this was a plot that he could use for himself, in part to stir up enough fear that he could make a better case for money, for a standing army in such an instance. A standing army which he would claim would be necessary for any Catholic insurrection, but which many opponents of the court, and Danby had many enemies, indeed believed might be used to impose what contemporaries referred to as arbitrary government.
- [12:06]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So we better get to our victim. Could you paint a picture of Sir Edmund Barry? Godfrey as a man, what kind of person was he? Paint a picture for us.
- [12:16]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
The word that comes to mind would be integrity. In an age that was famous for its immorality, Godfrey is an interesting contrast to that. He's a man of very austere life, a middle aged bachelor, he lives very modestly. He walks around on foot from errand to errand. He's extremely diligent. He was knighted as a result of his diligence. And bravery during the Great Fire of London in 1666. And all sorts of people are convinced that the Catholics had set this fire. Godfrey had also been extremely diligent and conscientious and had demonstrated his courage during the plague. And unlike most men of his social class who fled for their country estates or who just simply left London, Godfrey stayed at his post. And that was typical of the man. He was someone who was always there to do his duty. He famously followed a thief into a pest house, into a house that had been locked up because the inmates had died or were dying of the bubonic plague. And he collars a thief who was essentially looting the house and drags him out and arrests him. And so he was someone with not immense physical courage, but even perhaps more striking, he was someone with moral courage who wasn't afraid to do things that went against the flow of the culture in which he lived, and that included being willing to take risks for Catholic neighbors. All contemporaries acknowledged he was very reluctant to enforce the penal laws against Protestant dissenters, for whom he clearly had a lot of sympathy, but he was equally reluctant to persecute Catholics for their religion, too. He's a man of irreproachable integrity, I think, and stubborn, too.
- [14:11]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Well, let's Fast forward to October 1678, then. What happens to Godfrey?
- [14:17]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
So it's in August 1678 that the Popish Plot allegations are brought to the attention of the King, who, having no patience for paperwork, doesn't want to read 43 articles. He refers the man who is Titus Oates mentor, an Anglican clergyman named Israel Tongue, to his minister, Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby, who meets with Tongue to discuss these allegations. And I mentioned that at some point in this process, Danby drops some hints that make it into a new, longer version of these accusations. And there's a lot of mystery about what happens, why it is that Tongue and Oats come to Godfrey. Godfrey's a justice of the peace, and they approach him. For him to take their depositions, this is a way of. For them to signal that they think that the court's not acting. So if you believe in the Popish Plot, it also looks as though what's going on is that the court is trying to cover these charges up. So this was on the 6th of September, and there's also a bit of controversy about whether Godfrey read these informations. Oates and Tung would later claim that he had. Not that he had allowed them to affirm the truth of these charges and signals what amounted to a deposition, but he had not himself read them or kept a copy. And people who knew Godfrey thought that was extremely unlikely. And what's important in all this is that he knew Edward Colman, the Duke of York's protege. If he had seen his name in that list, it would have jumped right out at him. And I think in Oates's original charges, Coleman was not named. So what's interesting is that either on the 27th or 28th September, Titus Oates and Israel Tongue returned to Godfrey to swear these charges again before him. So why did they do this? And I said either the 27th or the 28th. Tangan Oates claimed it was the 28th that they met with Godfrey. But the document is dated the 27th. And this is really important because effectively, Oats and Tongue are summoned late on the 27th to attend the Privy Council about the Popish plot, and they come too late, so they're told to come the next day, the 28th. What happens is that Godfrey sees that not only have the accusations grown, but I think for the first time, when he sees the second set of allegations, he notices his friend Edward Coleman's name essentially implicated as one of the conspirators. Godfrey smells a rat. He thinks that Titus Oates has been suborned, and I think there's a lot of evidence that points to that. He thinks that somebody's been feeding him information. We have evidence from several sources, many of them reliable, that Godfrey went to talk to Edward Coleman and that Godfrey said, I think there's essentially a trap that's being set for your master, the Duke of York. So warn him about this. This is almost certainly the reason why Titus Oates and Israel Tongue are summoned before the Privy Council on the evening of the 27th, is because they've got wind of these charges. Titus Oates and Israel Tung, however, try to make it seem as though they go back to Godfrey after they've gone to the privy council, as though to plant the seed of doubt that the privy council, that is the king and his principal minister, Danby, are trying to suppress the plot.
- [18:13]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So, Andrea, I want to push you to the moment of Godfrey's disappearance. What actually happens? What are the marks of violence on him? And then we can go back and try and unpick how we've got here.
- [18:27]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
He's last seen leaving his house probably between 9 and 10 in the morning on a Saturday. On a Thursday afternoon, his body is discovered near Primrose Hill. His stick and his gloves are found a little way beside the body, which is head down in a ditch and impaled on his own sword. There was a bit of a botched investigation. The crime scene was compromised in all kinds of ways, in part because the sword was removed. There was no full autopsy done, but there were several probes determined that he had two sword wounds. In other words, the sword had hit one of his ribs and then he had been stabbed again. So although it looked superficially as though he might have committed suicide by falling on his sword, the possibility of this was so remote, given the other forensic evidence. For instance, not only were there two sword wounds, there were marks of a ligature around his neck. And this wasn't the kind of a mark that indicated he had been hanged because it went straight around his neck. So I think the assumption made by many people, and it's still, I think a pretty good working hypothesis, is that he was strangled with his own band, essentially the necktie that he wore, his torso was bruised as though he had been beaten. And there's still a bit of debate even amongst modern medical experts about whether that could have been post mortem lividity. But I think the consensus is that it was not that there was some evidence that he had been beaten. You have the fact that he's found in a muddy ditch, it's been raining. His clothes, however, are dry, his shoes are clean. It looked for all the world as though his body had been dumped there after the fact. And this gives rise to the belief that it's been kept indoors for several days. Because his body's found on a Thursday, he goes missing on a Saturday. Given the state of decomposition of the body, it seems likely he died on the afternoon or the evening of the day he went missing. We have some reliable witness testimony that places his last sighting really near to the law courts of Westminster, than to the area around Primrose Hill, which is really far out of town in the late 17th century.
- [20:44]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So the idea that it was suicide was a theory being floated at the time, a convenient political theory, but you've completely sort of blown that out of the water with this analysis. So the next thing that people are going to think of probably at this time is, well, the Catholics are the usual suspects in a conspiracy. Is that where they went with their analysis?
- [21:04]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
Interestingly, most Catholics initially embraced the theory of murder. The argument was is that either they were trying to suppress the investigation into the plot, or that Godfrey was killed as a kind of vengeance for his having investigated the plot. And both of those arguments are ridiculous on the face of it, because the evidence was already out. Why kill Godfrey. When Titus Oates and Israel Tung were still alive, you could hardly suppress the evidence of the plot because it had already come to the Privy Council. Also, why kill Godfrey? People who knew him, and this included not only Catholics, but Protestants who knew him, knew that he was really a friend to Catholics, and counted Catholics amongst his intimates, including Edward Coleman. But Catholics were seen as obviously the usual suspects in any kind of assassination. They had long been associated with treason. This notion that they had divided loyalties goes back at least to the reign of Elizabeth. They were associated, obviously, with incendiary plots, the Gunpowder Plot, assassination attempts. It's believed that the Jesuits, who have a different moral compass, who think that killing is justified for the sake of the cause, who absolve murder, who really are willing to give pardons to murderers and so on, they believe that the Jesuits have killed him. And William Lloyd, who's the curate of Godfrey's parish, makes this very clear in his funeral sermon. So we can accept all this as prejudice and completely irrational. And yet one of Titus Oates accusations was partly correct. He claimed that there had been a Jesuit consult, an administrative meeting in London in which the Popish plot was effectively cooked up, in which people agreed and they took solemn vows to assassinate the King, to reinstate Catholicism in England, to overthrow the government, and so on and so forth.
- [23:05]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So at least it seems that Oates was right about that.
- [23:07]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
Titus Oates was right that there was a Jesuit consult in London in April 1678, and he knew this because he had been a student in St. Omar in Flanders, in the Catholic seminary there. He claimed later that he had gone there to infiltrate the Popish plot, to gather information. In fact, he had been kicked out of Saint Omer because he was a bad student and possibly for other delinquencies. So he had heard that there was going to be a Jesuit meeting in London. He was right about that. But he didn't know where that meeting was going to be held. And that meeting was in fact held at the residence of the Catholic heir to the throne, played host to this International Jesuit Conference. So this was an incendiary secret. And some modern historians have actually said that this is the reason why Catholics did murder Godfrey, because he had access to the secret. Needless to say, that wasn't the reason why Godfrey was killed. And I think it's absolutely a ridiculous charge. But I think people in Godfrey's circle, people in his household, some of his friends, people like Lloyd, his servants and so on, they knew that Godfrey had gone to a meeting with a Catholic who had ties to the Duke of York on the day of his disappearance. There's all kinds of evidence that points to that, and they were reluctant to talk about it. But there were rumors that Godfrey had been murdered by the Catholics on the very afternoon of his disappearance, when he had been only gone a few hours. Foreign.
- [24:53]
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- [25:13]
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- [26:12]
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- [26:48]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
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Historian Andrea McKenzie
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- [27:08]
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- [27:20]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So if not Catholics then what about the possibility of the murder being connected with some of the high ranking Protestant figures you've mentioned? I love to Danby. The evidence is that he seems to have been involved in murkier plots than we usually hear about. Could it have been him?
- [27:40]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
Well, Danby, as I mentioned, had met with Oates and Tongue had almost certainly suborned Oates. He had hoped to use the plot for his own political agenda. And indeed, initially, when the plot broke out in late September, many opponents of the court, and many people more broadly, suspected it to be a court trick, that it was just something that. Ironically, we now see this as something that was weaponized by the political opposition against James and his brother Charles. But ironically, it was initially believed to be a plot concocted by the government itself. So there was that sense. And Danby also. There's all kinds of evidence, some of it good, some of it more questionable, but I think ultimately we have to accept that it happened. Godfrey saw Danby on the day of his disappearance, probably sometime in the early afternoon, late morning, and various witnesses claimed that they had argued vociferously and that Danby had threatened Godfrey.
- [28:43]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So Godfrey was never seen leaving Danby's residence after that.
- [28:47]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
There's that possibility. There's also the possibility, and this is something that I think becomes a favorite theory from the 19th century onwards, a kind of Tory conspiracy theory, which is that the Whig opposition either manufactured this from the beginning or quickly seized control and weaponized the plot. And it's true, I think we can say that the political opposition made use of it. The question I think we have to ask, though, is to what degree did they actively coerce, suborn script witnesses and their accounts? And my own research suggests that, no, that if you look carefully at the records, they question all kinds of people who came up with anti Catholic conspiracy theories, whom they subsequently released. And in fact, I think that the charges of subordination and witness tampering and coercion can be made just as easily and in fact, more easily against the court than against the opposition in this period. But the Whig opposition, if you want to take that conspiratorial phrase, cui bono, who benefits? And if you want to argue from results, which unfortunately people do all too often, the Whig opposition had every reason to kill Godfrey and to either lay his death on the Catholics or possibly even on the Earl of Danby, an Anglican, but one who was very unpopular, and then weaponize the conspiracy to force the exclusion of the King's brother from the succession, or to force the king to divorce his wife and potentially remarry and father a Protestant heir. Because many of the narratives, in fact, the narrative that eventually congeals is that Godfrey is killed at Somerset House, the Queen's Residence.
- [30:37]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
This is also interesting, and this is very plausible that this is used as a political weapon, essentially, this murder. But can you tell me about the newly deciphered shorthand letters and how these secret writings and ciphers, visible ink, even contrary to our understanding of what was going on and the investigation into Godfrey's death?
- [31:00]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
So Charles II dies in 1685, and what everyone had feared came to pass. His Catholic brother comes to the throne and James II reopens the investigation into Godfrey's death and essentially gives carte blanche to a very gifted Tory royalist propagandist, Sir Roger Lestrange. And Roger Lestrange is this interesting character and his narrative and his theory has really dominated the conversation, partly because he was such a good propagandist, but he was also a master of dubious editorial practice, of cut and paste, taking things out of context. He was somebody who asked very tendentious leading questions. He was given all of the evidence, all the depositions from the coroner's investigation and subsequent interviews with witnesses, which all later disappeared. So he probably himself destroyed the evidence after writing about the death of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, in which he resuscitates the suicide theory, but he massages the evidence so that suddenly it's much more compelling.
- [32:10]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
What does he do?
- [32:11]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
He irons out the discrepancies that were there before. He claims contemporaries had claimed that there was no blood in the ditch where Godfrey was found, which showed that the sword wound was post mortem. Lestrange found witnesses, which I think were entirely dubious if, follow the paper trail. They in fact never said this, or certainly not like this, but he finds witnesses who claim there was lots of blood gushing everywhere, blood in puddles.
- [32:35]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And was any of that credible?
- [32:37]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
No, I don't think that any of that is true. But he. In the course of investigating his book, Lestrange writes to William Lloyd, who's then the Bishop of St Asaph, who was then the curate of Godfrey's parish, and who knew Godfrey and who had viewed his body and who had actually spoken to some of the men accused of his murder who were ultimately executed, as well as one of the witnesses. That became a Popish plot in former Miles Prance. So William Lloyd knew a lot, and he also knew Godfrey's household as servants. Lestrange wrote a series of letters to him asking for more information about the body and various other things, and he wrote a series of, almost like bullets of these very tendentious questions. So I want you to tell me how it was clear, clear that Godfrey committed suicide. I want you to tell me how it was clear that the coroner's verdict was pressured into returning a verdict of murder. So he essentially takes all the points that he wants to make in his book and he puts them in the affirmative and says, you're going to agree with this, aren't you? And Lloyd obviously responded to him. And some parts of his letters are reprinted in Lestrange's History of the Times, the volume that devoted to Godfrey's murder. But these are very selectively quoted. And the shorthand drafts of Lloyd's reply to Lestrange are found in the Gloucestershire Record Office. The cataloger there obviously didn't read the shorthand and in summarizing the content, said, sir Roger Lestrange asks Bishop Lloyd about Godfrey's death and agrees with the bishop's suggestion it was suicide, as though this originated with Lloyd and not with Lestrange's own contentious questions.
- [34:21]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So deciphering the shorthand tells us all kinds of interesting things. That's fascinating.
- [34:27]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
Yeah, I think Lloyd, far from agreeing with Lestrange's narrative, let alone suggesting it himself of suicide, pushes back against almost every single thing that Lestrange claims. He claims that the coroner's jury was not pressured to return a verdict of murder. And in fact, it wasn't the Whig Attorney General, William Jones, who pressured anyone. It was the King's own officers and it was one of his own doctors that was there, that was the King, that was putting the. This pressure of Charles ii, not the Whig opposition or the. As it would later become known. Of course, the word Whig isn't really in circulation yet. More interestingly, though, Lloyd pushes back against the story that there was blood, the story that Godfrey could have fallen on his sword. He says very clearly that he saw two sword wounds and that any man who could have given himself the first of such wounds could never have given himself the second. There was no way you could fall on your sword, leap up and then fall on it again. There was no way. Lestrange said, tell me how it became patently clear how the marks on Godfrey's coat were mud and not wax. And this was another piece of evidence used to implicate the Queen in the murder. It was claimed that only Jesuits or high ranking households would use white beeswax rather than tallow, essentially animal fat in their candles. And Godfrey's coat had been found with white wax on it, as though his body had lain somewhere and people had leaned over in darkness holding a candle. And Lestrange makes it very clear that, oh, this is mud. Lloyd says no, in fact, it was wax. I thank you for informing me. It was mud, but I could feel it with my own fingers, as did many other people there. Many people had seen Godfrey's body and even handled it. What's more interesting, though, in these letters is that Lloyd begs Lestrange. He actually begs him. And there's almost something poignant in these pleas to lay off the investigation. He says it will not be for His Majesty's service. He says several times he crosses it out and then writes it again. Who needs this Cui bono? He says it will not be to His Majesty's service to unravel further into this matter. So over and over again he's saying, don't keep poking the bear. Don't pursue this. This will lead to a place that is not good. So he makes it clear that he thinks that the Duke of York is somehow implicated. And he also drops a hint about the Earl of Danby trying to prevent an investigation from taking place, from preventing the privy from launching a search. So one of the things Lestrange was trying to prove was that Godfrey's two brothers had covered up a suicide. But Lloyd made it very clear that the two brothers had, from the very beginning, wanted to launch an investigation and that they had suspected the Catholics. This was not a narrative that they came up with after they were disposing of the body.
- [37:52]
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- [38:51]
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- [39:13]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So let us bring this to a conclusion then. If you were to present one plausible scenario for Godfrey's death?
- [39:21]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
Yeah.
- [39:22]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
What would it be?
- [39:23]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
That's a huge question. One fascinating question is what happened to Godfrey's notebook? So he was known to carry a notebook with him all the time, to take down depositions and to make his own notes about cases. And it's well known that as an active magistrate, he investigated things himself. He was known to be a bit of a snoop. There's several interesting things. I mentioned that several days after Titus Oates had come to him for the second time, after he had warned Coleman. They were scenes at the house of a mutual friend. Coleman, under a pseudonym, visited Godfrey and they sat in a private room going over papers together. The papers were probably Titus Oates allegations, because the second time Godfrey kept a copy. And perhaps he was just warning his friend that he was being accused and helping him prepare a defense. But it's also possible that there were other papers he was going over. There's all kinds of questions we have. There's evidence. For instance, the night before Godfrey disappeared, two other interesting things. One of his servants claimed that he spent the night burning papers, that he took as many papers as would fill her apron and he burnt them. So he's destroying evidence of some kind. Why? We don't know. He also received a letter from somebody that astonished him, as though it was a request for a meeting. And he said aloud, I don't know what it means. Was this a request for a meeting? The next day, what happened? Who was he meeting the day of his disappearance? At the same time, though, we have the notebook which is never found. What was this notebook? And my own theory is that the notebook was evidence from Coleman, not the evidence that his master, James, Duke of York, had hosted the Jesuit consult at his palace. I don't think that was it, but what I think it was evidence very damaging to one of the Earl of Danby's enemies and somebody who really posited himself as a kind of patriotic member of the opposition, the Duke of Buckingham. So the Duke of Buckingham, while he played this anti Catholic card, was secretly hobnobbing with the King of France, going on visits personally to meet with Louis xiv. And he was regularly in receipt of large sums of money from the King of France. And he was engaged not just in bribing members of Parliament and so on, but he was also in cahoots with one of Colman's Catholic partners, Correspondence, the Earl of Berkshire, that was a close friend and client of Buckingham's. In other words, the Duke of Buckingham had a lot to lose to have his secret corrupt dealings with the French exposed, it would have revealed him to be a hypocrite and destroyed his public image, which he cared very much about. So I think that what Godfrey might have been doing was trying to use information that was compromising to the Duke of Buckingham, who was a particular enemy of the Earl of Denby, to help bargain for Coleman's life. And I think there's evidence that suggests he met with Danby that day. And he also met with someone associated with James's household, probably one of James's confidential servants, probably trying to save Coleman's life.
- [42:40]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And did Coleman ever say anything about this himself?
- [42:43]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
Coleman, when he was in prison, made some sort of very indirect remarks about how he had given Godfrey information. There were rumors that actually came out in one of the later Popish plot trials that Coleman had told his patron, the Duke of York, that no one was in possession of any compromising evidence except for Godfrey. And then there were rumors that Godfrey had been killed to cover up that evidence, which led back to Coleman's secret correspondence with France, which compromised the Duke of York. But I think there was also evidence compromising the Protestant Duke of Buckingham, well known for being an unscrupulous man with a high tolerance for violence. He had wounded his mistress's husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury, so severely during a duel that the latter subsequently dies of his wounds. I think you could fairly characterize him as a malignant narcissist. He himself thought he had a claim to the throne of England. He boasted about this often to Louis xiv. He seemed to think of himself as a kingmaker and a power broker. He played with the idea of having his own private army funded by Louis xiv. He was a rival of the Earl of Shaftesbury, another member of the opposition. So he had lots to lose. And he had a hatchet man named John Scott, a kind of quintessential Renaissance rogue, who had been also involved in all kinds of violent affairs and who had killed people before. And interestingly, Scott, I think, who's a good candidate for the actual murder, leaves England around the time just before Godfrey's body is discovered, and he travels from Gravesend to the Continent under the pseudonym of Godfrey. So there's all kinds of interesting reasons. I think we can never be sure who killed Godfrey, but I think the Duke of Buckingham had a good motive. I don't think the Duke of York had had this kind of motive. I think we can absolve the Catholics altogether.
- [44:53]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So then, to finish, could you tell me briefly what you think Godfrey's death tells us? About trust in authority at this time and you know, the nature of political paranoia and Restoration England.
- [45:06]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
So trust in the government had completely broken down and also in official sources of information. One of the great ironies, of course, is that Charles repeatedly paroled Parliament and then later dissolves it to protect his minister Danby and his brother from being impeached. And this sets off this chain of events, these unintended consequences, which mean that the Licensing act that regulates publication and censorship really can no longer be enforced. And there's an explosion of print. But even before that, there's all sorts of rumor, innuendo, manuscript libels that are circulating. And I think that the fall of 1678 is the perfect story. You have Godfrey's body, you have the discovery of Edward Coleman engaging in this treasonous correspondence with France and papal agents. So you have this deep distrust of the government. You have well founded suspicions that Charles himself has secretly promised Louis XIV to convert to Catholicism, which we now know is all true, that he was in receipt of subsidies from France, that that ironically Louis XIV was paying money to the King of England at the same time more or less as the political opposition, in order to prevent the two from reaching an agreement. So in this climate of suspicion, of paranoia, and I say paranoia, and yet these suspicions are rational and plausible and grounded on reasonable fears. So all of these things, I think contribute to a kind of conspiratorial crisis that leads to the constitutional crisis, the exclusion crisis from 1679-81. And people distrust official channels, official sources of information. And I think, as all kinds of scholars like Mark Knights and Francis Dolan have pointed out, belief in facts and news and accounts becomes relative to your party conviction, especially as the lines become more firmly drawn after about 1670, 1680, there becomes a Tory version of events and a Whig version of events. And interestingly, and I think it's problematic in a lesson for our own time, is that neither side can disregard information because it sounds far fetched or irrational, or they can't say, that just doesn't make sense. The only way to refute these kinds of charges is to use another conspiratorial explanation, one conspiratorial nail driving out another. They become stuck in a kind of conspiratorial loop in which only conspiratorial theories can explain what's going on, because there's a complete breakdown in trust in the government and official sources of information.
- [47:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Well, thank you for taking us deep into politics in late 17th century England. And it's been fascinating to examine his story. And honestly, when you were describing him in the ditch, I did feel like we needed to call on Sherlock Holmes. The body that's dry when it's been raining. It's a fascinating case. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise.
- [48:21]
Historian Andrea McKenzie
Thank you so much for having me.
- [48:25]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors From History Hit. Thanks also to my researcher Max Wintle and my producer Rob Weinberg. We are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a line and notjusthetors@historyhit.com and I look forward to joining you again for another episode. Next time on Not Just the Tutors from History Hit.
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