The success of Godfrey’s murder as a political move is indubitable. The Duke of York was the pivot of the Roman Catholic schemes in England,[309] and Godfrey’s death saved both from utter ruin. Nevertheless it was attended by gravely adverse consequences. If the fact of the Jesuit congregation at St. James’ Palace had become known, nothing could have saved the duke. But the crime which prevented this gave an impetus to the pursuit of the Plot and a strength to the Whig party, so great that it all but succeeded in barring him from the throne and establishing a Protestant dynasty. Godfrey’s fame rose almost to the height of legend. On a Sunday in the February after his murder a great darkness overspread the face of the sky of London. The atmosphere was so murky that in many churches service could not be continued without the aid of candles. It was said that in the midst of the gloom in the queen’s chapel at Somerset House, even while mass was being said, the figure of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey appeared above the altar. Thereafter the place went by the name of Godfrey Hall.[310] POLITICS OF THE PLOT CHAPTER I THE GOVERNMENT “The English nation are a sober people,” wrote Charles I to his abler son, “however at present infatuated.” Charles II had greater right than ever his father to believe that his subjects were mad. The appearance of Oates and the death of Godfrey heralded an outburst of feeling as monstrous as the obscure events which were its cause. From the sense of proportion they had displayed in the Civil War the English people seemed now divorced and, while they affected to judge those of “less happier lands” fickle and tempest-tossed, let the tide of insobriety mount to the point of complete abandonment. Public opinion was formed without reason. The accumulated suspicion and hatred of years swelled into an overpowering volume of tumultuous emotion. Scarcely the most sane escaped the prevailing contagion of prejudice and terror. None could tell where the spread would stop.