perjured Bedloe, the King naturally remarked: 'The parties were
still alive' (the deponents) 'to give the informations.' Bedloe
answered, that the papers were to be seized 'in hopes the second
informations taken from the parties would not have agreed with the
first, and so the thing would have been disproved.'** This was
monstrously absurd, for the slayers of Godfrey could not have
produced the documents of which they had robbed him.

*State Trials, vii. p. 163.
**Pollock, p. 385.

The theory that Sir Edmund was killed because Coleman had told him
too many secrets did not come to general knowledge till the trial of
Lord Stafford in 1680. The hypothesis--Godfrey slain because,
through Coleman, he knew too many Catholic secrets--is practically
that of Mr. Pollock. It certainly does supply a motive for
Godfrey's assassination. Hot-headed Catholics who knew, or
suspected, that Godfrey knew too much, MAY have killed him for that
reason, or for the purpose of seizing his papers, but it is
improbable that Catholics of education, well aware that, if he
blabbed, Godfrey must ruin himself, would have put their hands into
his blood, on the mere chance that, if left alive, he might betray
both himself and them.

4.

It is now necessary to turn backward a little and see what occurred
immediately after the meeting of Coleman and Godfrey on September
28. On that day, Oates gave his lying evidence before the Council:
he was allowed to go on a Jesuit drive, with warrants and officers;