somewhat rare quality of being impervious to court influence. That he was upon friendly terms with the Roman Catholics was, for the informer’s purpose, of little moment. Oates was in search of support outside the council-chamber, and Godfrey offered exactly what he wanted. In case the government wished to suppress the discovery of the plot, Godfrey was not the man to acquiesce in such a design on account of private considerations. On Saturday, October 12, Sir Edmund Godfrey left his house in Hartshorn Lane between nine and ten o’clock in the morning. That night he did not return home. The next day Godfrey’s clerk sent to inquire at his mother’s house in Hammersmith. Obtaining no news there, the clerk communicated with his master’s two brothers, who lived in the city. They sent word that they would come to Hartshorn Lane later in the day, and enjoined the clerk meanwhile to keep Godfrey’s absence secret. In the evening Mr. Michael and Mr. Benjamin Godfrey appeared at their brother’s house, and set out in company with the clerk upon a round of inquiry. That night and all Monday they continued the search, but could nowhere obtain tidings of the missing man. On Tuesday the brothers laid information of Godfrey’s absence before the Lord Chancellor, and in the afternoon of the same day the clerk publicly announced his disappearance at a crowded funeral.[150] Up to this time the fact was unknown except to Godfrey’s household and near relatives. It was afterwards asserted by those who wished to prove his suicide that the secret had been kept in order to prevent discovery of the manner of his death. The law directed that the estate of a person dying by his own hand should be forfeited to the crown, and to prevent the forfeiture Godfrey’s family concealed the fact. Sir Roger L’Estrange devoted some effort to establish this.[151] He was however so unwise as immediately to demolish his case by collecting evidence to show that the dead man’s brothers had approached the Lord Chancellor, “to beg his lordship’s assistance to secure their brother’s estate, in case he should be found to have made himself away.”[152] Certainly, if the Godfreys had known his suicide and had been moved to conceal it in order to save his estate, the last person in the world to whom they would have admitted their motive was the Lord Chancellor. L’Estrange’s sense of the contradictory was small. Not only did he commit this blunder, but he was at considerable pains to show that the fact of Godfrey’s disappearance was never concealed at all; on the contrary, the news was bruited about the town as early as the afternoon of the day on which Sir Edmund left his house, in order to raise a cry that he had been murdered by the Roman Catholics.[153] He did not consider that, as the only persons who had first-hand news of Godfrey’s absence were members of his family, the rumour must have emanated from themselves; whereas he persisted at the same time that their one object was to keep the