**Life of James II. i, p. 534. It is Mr. Pollock’s argument that, when Godfrey and Coleman went over the Oates papers, Coleman would prove Oates’s perjury, and would to this end let out that, on April 24, the Jesuits met, not as Oates swore, at a tavern, but at the Duke of York’s house, a secret fatal to the Duke and the Catholic cause. The Jesuits then slew Godfrey to keep the secret safe.* *Pollock, p. 153. Now, first, I cannot easily believe that Coleman would blab this secret (quite unnecessarily, for this proof of Oates’s perjury could not be, and was not, publicly adduced), unless Godfrey was already deep in the Catholic intrigues. He may have been, judging by his relations with Coleman. If Godfrey was not himself engaged in Catholic intrigues, Coleman need only tell him that Oates was not in England in April, and could not have been, as he swore he was, at the ‘consult.’ Next, Godfrey was not the man (as Mr. Pollock supposes) to reveal his knowledge to the world, from a sense of duty, even if the Court ‘stifled the plot.’ Mr. Pollock says: ‘Godfrey was, by virtue of his position as justice of the peace, a Government official.... Sooner or later he would certainly reveal it.... The secret... had come into the hands of just one of the men who could not afford, even if he might wish, to retain it.’* Mr. Pollock may conceive, though I do not find him saying so, that Godfrey communicated Oates’s charges to Coleman merely for the purpose of ‘pumping’ him and surprising some secret. If so he acted foolishly. *Pollock, p. 154. In fact, Godfrey was already ‘stifling the plot.’ A Government official, he was putting Coleman in a posture to fly, and to burn his papers; had he burned all of them, the plot was effectually stifled. Next, Godfrey could not reveal the secret without revealing his own misprision of treason. He would be asked ‘how he knew the secret.’ Godfrey’s lips were thus sealed; he had neither the wish nor the power to speak out, and so his knowledge of the secret, if he knew it, was innocuous to the Jesuits. ‘What is it nearer?’ Coleman was reported, by a perjured informer, to have asked.* *State Trials, vii. 1319. Trial of Lord Stafford, 1680. To this point I return later. Meanwhile, let it be granted that Godfrey knew the secret from Coleman, and that, though, since Godfrey could not speak without self-betrayal--though it was ‘no nearer’--still the Jesuits thought well to mak sikker and slay him. Still, what is the evidence that Godfrey had a mortal secret? Mr. Pollock gives it thus: ‘He had told Mr. Wynnel that he was master of a dangerous secret, which would be fatal to him. “Oates,” he said, “is sworn and is perjured.”’ * These sentences are not thus collocated in the original. The secret was not, as from Mr. Pollock’s arrangement it appears to be, that Oates was perjured. *Pollock, p. 150.