help that one can." Coleman fled the country. This was more than was wanted to inflame the minds and excite the fears of all the members of the council, before which Oates and Tonge appeared. A terrible incident came to add to the public anxiety and indignation. Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, a magistrate of London, who had received the depositions of Titus Oates, and perhaps even the confessions of Coleman, whose friend he was, disappeared from his house for some days, then was found murdered in a ditch not far from the church of St. Pancras. His sword was plunged into his breast. An attempt was made to represent this as a case of suicide, but both the medical examination and popular feeling denounced the murderers. {374} The body remained exposed for two days. "Many went to see it," says Burnet, "who went away much moved by the sight, and indeed men's spirits were so sharpened upon it that we all looked on it as a very great happiness that the people did not vent their fury upon the Popish about the town." An immense crowd gathered at the interment of Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey; he was regarded as a martyr to Protestantism. The fears of Parliament were as great as those of the people of London. The king had announced an intention of bringing the affair before the ordinary tribunals. The Houses of Parliament had summoned Titus Oates before them; voted him their thanks and a pension of £1,200 sterling; they indicted all the Roman Catholic lords named by the renegade; the prisons were crowded with Papists; for the first time the question of the succession to the throne was agitated in Parliament. The Duke of York had ceased to take his place in the Privy Council; this prudent course secured him an exemption from the general measure which soon afterwards forbade the Catholic Peers to sit in Parliament. The Test Act had already excluded Papists from the House of Commons. The denunciations continued, and to Titus Oates was now added one Bedloe: the executions commenced; a few obscure Catholics had already paid with their lives for the terrors of England when the new Parliament assembled at Westminster. {375}