admit of their executing so bloody a plan with the necessary degree of secrecy. 2d, It has been thought that Godfrey, a man of a melancholy temperament, whose dark and cloudy spirit had been just agitated by a strange tale of blood and mystery, may have been wrought up to take that time to commit suicide. It is even positively asserted, that he hanged himself at home, and that his brothers conveyed the body to the place where it was found, to avoid the shame and other consequences of his fate becoming public. There is something plausible in this account; but it is entirely unsupported by proof of any kind. 3d, The grand solution, and indeed the only one which would go down at the time, was, that Godfrey had fallen by the papists. There were probably enough of fanatics in that sect to have executed such a deed, had it been of consequence to the progress of their religion: But there appears no adequate motive for taking off Godfrey, who had merely taken down a deposition which he could not refuse to receive, and who had besides endeavoured to serve the accused parties, by transmitting to Coleman an account of the affidavit; while Oates and his companions, the depositaries of the supposed secret, and whose death would stifle the plot for ever, were suffered to walk about, even unattempted. Positive evidence was however obtained, to silence all hypothetical reasoning on the subject. One Bedlow, a very infamous character, amid a thousand dreadful stories of fires raised by the Jesuits from 1666 downwards, charged the Catholics, and particularly Miles Prance, a silver-smith, with the death of Godfrey[329]. This man was imprisoned in Newgate; and, after much communing with Shaftesbury and Buckingham, in which, it is said, neither threats, promises, nor actual tortures were spared, confessed himself an accomplice in the murder.[330] He retracted this confession before the privy-council; but being remanded to prison, new terrors, promises, and sufferings, induced him to retract that retractation. His story was a tissue of improbabilities; and he and Bedlow, when adduced as evidence on the trial of three poor men, whom they charged with strangling Godfrey, concealing the body in Somerset-House, and afterwards disposing of it on Primrose-hill, contradicted each other, and contradicted themselves. All was in vain: the three innocent victims of perjury were condemned and executed, and the witnesses promoted and rewarded, not with money only, but, strange to say, with universal respect and regard; although their merit, supposing it to be real, was that of murderers and incendiaries, who had turned evidence for the crown against their accomplices.