withdrew, and maintained that his confession was false, before King
and Council (December 30), 'He knows nothing in the world of all he
has said.' The Lord Chancellor proposed 'to have him have the
rack.'*

*State Papers, Domestic, Charles II., Dec. 30, 1678, Bundle 408.

Probably he 'did not have the rack,' but he had the promise of it,
and nearly died of cold, ironed, in the condemned cell. 'He was
almost dead with the disorder in his mind, and with cold in his
body,' said Dr. Lloyd, who visited him, to Burnet. Lloyd got a bed
and a fire for the wretch, who revived, and repeated his original
confession.* Lloyd believed in his sincerity, says Burnet, writing
many years later. In 1686, Lloyd denied that he believed.

*Burnet, ii. p. 773.

Prance's victims, Hill, Berry, and Green, were tried on February 5,
1679. Prance told his story. On one essential point he professed
to know nothing. Where was Godfrey from five to nine o'clock, the
hour when he was lured into Somerset House? He was dogged in fields
near Holborn to somewhere unknown in St. Clement's. It is an odd
fact that, though at the dinner hour, one o'clock, close to his own
house, and to that of Mr. Welden (who had asked him to dine), Sir
Edmund seems to have dined nowhere. Had he done so, even in a
tavern, he must have been recognised. Probably Godfrey was dead
long before 9 P.M. Mr. Justice Wild pressed Prance on this point of
where Godfrey was; he could say nothing.* Much evidence (on one
point absurd) was collected later by L'Estrange, and is accepted by
North in his 'Examen,' to prove that, by some of his friends,