***L'Estrange, Brief History, iii. pp. 87-89.
****Lords' MSS. p. 48, October 24.

In the circumstances of the finding of the body it would have been
correct for Constable Brown to leave it under a guard till daylight
and the arrival of surgical witnesses, but the night was
threatening, and Brown ordered the body to be lifted; he dragged out
the sword with difficulty, and had the dead man carried to the White
House Inn. There, under the candles, the dead man, as we said, was
recognised for Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, a very well-known justice
of the peace and wood and coal dealer. All this occurred on
Thursday, October 17, and Sir Edmund had not been seen by honest men
and thoroughly credible witnesses, at least, since one o'clock on
Saturday, October 12. Then he was observed near his house in Green
Lane, Strand, but into his house he did not go.

Who, then, killed Sir Edmund?

The question has never been answered, though three guiltless men
were later hanged for the murder. Every conceivable theory has been
tried; the latest is that of Mr. Pollock: Godfrey was slain by 'the
Queen's confessor,' Le Fevre, 'a Jesuit,' and some other Jesuits,
with lay assistance.* I have found no proof that Le Fevre was
either a Jesuit or confessor of the Queen.

*Pollock, The Popish Plot, Duckworth, London, 1903.

As David Hume says, the truth might probably have been discovered,
had proper measures been taken at the moment. But a little mob of
horse and foot had trampled round the ditch in the dark, disturbing