his favour, his word on the point is the more deserving of credit. If Prance himself was a party to the murder he must have known the real authors of it. He must have accused the innocent not from necessity but from choice, and in order to conceal the guilty. As he was expected and supposed to corroborate Bedloe’s evidence, his most natural course was to introduce into his story all those whom Bedloe had named. He carefully avoided mentioning any of them. No other reason is conceivable except that he knew Bedloe to have exposed the real murderers, and that he wished to shield them. What then was the motive of the crime, and how did this extraordinary complication arise? CHAPTER V THE SECRET Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was an intimate friend of Edward Coleman, secretary to the Duchess of York. At the time of the murder Coleman lay in Newgate under an accusation of treason, and had so lain for a fortnight. He was therefore never examined on the subject of his friend’s death. The omission was unfortunate, for Coleman could probably have thrown some light upon the nature of the magistrate’s end.[269] It was constantly said, and the statement has often been repeated, that when Oates left a copy of his information with Godfrey on September 27, Godfrey at once wrote to Coleman an account of the charges contained in it to give the Duke of York warning of the coming storm.[270] The story was extensively used by those who wished to prove that Godfrey had been murdered by the supporters of the Plot, or that he had committed suicide from fear of a parliamentary inquiry into his conduct. He had not only this reason for fear, urged L’Estrange, but he had concealed the fact of Oates’ discovery to him for nearly a whole month; this was the meaning of Godfrey’s enigmatical expressions of apprehension, and his fear, combined with constitutional melancholy, drove him to take his own life.[271] Whether or no he suffered from depression is not a question of importance, since it has been proved that he did not commit suicide, but was murdered. The rest of the argument is equally unsound. When Godfrey took Oates’ first deposition on September 6, he had no copy of the information left with him and knew that it had already been communicated to the government.[272] As for the fact that Godfrey had sent an account of Oates’ revelations to the Duke of York, it would be absurd to suppose that plans of vengeance were harboured against him on this score, for the duke had been acquainted with the matter since August 31, when the forged letters were sent to Bedingfield at Windsor, so that the information he received from Godfrey was unimportant.[273] As this was a fact of which the Lord Treasurer was perfectly aware, the suggestions of North and Warner, the Jesuit provincial, that Godfrey had been threatened and finally dispatched by order of Danby, on account of his officiousness