the body to the inn had stumbled, were stained in the same way. As they had entered the house the body had been jerked against the doorpost; similar marks were found there; and when it was set on the table there was a further effusion of blood and serum which dripped upon the floor of the inn parlour. With the exception of the part of the shirt which covered the wound at the back, the clothes of the dead man were without any stain of blood.[170] The importance of this is obvious. A sword driven through the living heart must produce a great discharge of blood. The clothes of a man thus killed would be saturated with blood. The ground on which he lay would be covered with it. Only in one case would this not happen. If the sword plugged the orifice of the wound in such a way as wholly to stop the flow of blood from it, the quantity which escaped would be inconsiderable. In the case of Sir Edmund Godfrey this could not have taken place. L’Estrange says: “The sword stopped the fore part of the wound, as tight as a tap.”[171] But the only manner in which he could suggest that Godfrey committed suicide was by resting his sword on the edge of the bank beyond the ditch and falling forward on it.[172] It is impossible to believe that if he had killed himself in this manner the sword should not have been disturbed or twisted by his fall. As he fell, it must have been violently wrenched, the wound would have been torn, and the ensuing rush of blood have flooded the ditch and his body lying in it.[173] Apart from L’Estrange’s bare word, there is no reason to believe that the wound was plugged by the blade of the sword. This would have been in itself a remarkable circumstance; and the fact that there is no evidence to the point, when every other detail was so carefully noted, raises a presumption that the statement was untrue. Even if it had been the case, the second wound would still afford matter for consideration. It would be sufficiently strange that a man wishing to end his life should bethink himself of falling on his sword only after bungling over the easier way of suicide by stabbing himself. But it is hardly credible that a considerable flesh wound should be made and the weapon withdrawn from it without some flow of blood resulting; and there was no blood at all on the front of Godfrey’s body or on the clothes covering the two wounds. The surgeons and the jury who trusted them were perfectly right in their conclusion. There can be no substantial doubt that the wounds found on Godfrey’s body were not the cause of his death, but were inflicted at some time after the event. As a dead man cannot be supposed to thrust a sword through his own corpse, he had certainly been murdered. When this point was reached, the nature of his end was evident. The neck was dislocated and showed signs of strangulation. Clearly the magistrate had been throttled in a violent struggle, during which his neck was broken and his body hideously bruised. The clerk