The Valet's Tragedy, and Other StudiesLang, Andrew
History
The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies
Lang, Andrew
History; World history
It is just as easy to argue, on Mr. Pollock’s other line, that Prance
varied from Bedloe in order that the inconsistencies might prove his
own falsehood. But we have no reason to suppose that Prance did know
the details of Bedloe’s confession, as to the motive of the murder,
the hour, the exact spot, and the names of the criminals. Later he told
L’Estrange a palpable lie: Bedloe’s confession had been shown to him
before he made his own. If that were true, he purposely contradicted
Bedloe in detail. But Mr. Pollock rejects the myth. Then how did Prance
know the details given by Bedloe?* Ignorant of Bedloe’s version, except
in two or three points, Prance could not but contradict it. He thus
could not accuse Bedloe’s Jesuits. He did not name other men, as Mr.
Pollock holds, to shield the Jesuits. Practically they did not need
to be shielded. Jesuits with seven weeks’ start of the law were safe
enough. Even if they were caught, were guilty, and had the truth
extracted from them, involving Prance, the truth about HIM would come
out, whether he now denounced them or not. But he did not know that
Bedloe had denounced them.
*Pollock, pp. 142, 143.
Mr. Pollock’s theory of the relation of Bedloe to Godfrey’s murder is
this: Bedloe had no hand in the murder, and never saw the corpse. The
crime was done in Somerset House, ‘the Queen’s confessor,’ Father Le
Fevre, S.J., having singular facilities for entering, with his friends,
and carrying a dead body out ‘through a private door’--a door not
mentioned by any witnesses, nor proved to exist by the evidence of a
chart. This Le Fevre, with Walsh, lived in the same house as Bedloe.
From them, Bedloe got his information. ‘It is easy to conjecture how he
could have obtained it. Walsh and Le Fevre were absent from their rooms,
for a considerable part of the nights of Saturday and Wednesday, October
12 and 16. Bedloe’s suspicions must have been aroused, and, either by
threats or cajolery, he wormed part of the secret out of his friends.
He obtained a general idea of the way in which the murder had been
committed and of the persons concerned in it. One of these was a
frequenter of the Queen’s chapel whom he knew by sight. He thought him
to be a subordinate official there.’*
*Pollock, pp. 157, 158.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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