should examine Prance in prison, and acquaint his fellow-prisoners in Newgate with the king’s assurance of pardon consequent on discoveries relating to the plot.[221] Prance confessed that he had been engaged in the murder and had much information to give on the subject. He was examined by the lords, and on the next day repeated his deposition before the privy council. At the beginning of October one Gerald, or Fitzgerald, an Irish priest belonging to the household of the Venetian ambassador, had approached him on the subject of putting out of the way a man whose name was not divulged. About a week later he learned that this was Sir Edmund Godfrey. Two other men were also concerned in the matter. Green, a cushion-layer in the chapel at Somerset House, and Laurence Hill, servant to Dr. Gauden, the treasurer of the queen’s chapel. They told him that Godfrey was to be killed, “for that he was a great enemy to the queen or her servants, and that he had used some Irishmen ill.” Lord Bellasis, said Gerald, had promised a reward. Prance consented to their proposals, the more readily because he had a private grudge against the magistrate. During the next week they watched for an opportunity to waylay Godfrey, and on Saturday, October 12, “did dodge him from his house that morning to all the places he went to until he came to his death.”[222] The same day the king ordered the Duke of Monmouth and the Earl of Ossory to accompany Prance to Somerset House and examine him on the spot where he said that the murder had taken place. There he entered into a detailed account of the crime. At about nine o’clock at night[223] Godfrey was coming from St. Clement Danes down the Strand, followed by Hill, Green, and Gerald. Hill walked on ahead, and as Godfrey came opposite the water-gate of Somerset House begged him to come into the court and put an end to a quarrel between two men who were fighting. The magistrate turned in through the wicket, with Hill, Green, and Gerald following them. Prance, who was waiting inside, came to the gate to keep watch. The others went down the court until they came to a bench in the right-hand corner close to the stable-rails, where Berry, the porter of Somerset House, and an Irishman, whose name Prance did not know, were sitting. Green crept up close behind, and when they had reached the bench threw a large twisted handkerchief round Godfrey’s neck and pulled it tight. The three other men set upon him and dragged him down into the corner behind the bench. Green knelt upon his chest and pounded it, and then wrung his neck round until it was broken. This, said Prance, Green had told him a quarter of an hour afterwards when he came down from the gate to see what had happened. The body was carried across the court, through a door in the left-hand corner, from which a flight of stairs led to a long gallery. From the gallery a door opened on to a flight of eight steps, leading into Hill’s lodgings. In a small room to the right