If I held a brief against the Jesuits, I should make much of a point
which Mr. Pollock does not labour. Just about the time when Prance
began confessing, in London, December 24, 1678, one Stephen Dugdale,
styled 'gentleman,' was arrested in Staffordshire, examined, and
sent up to town. He was a Catholic, and had been in Lord Aston's
service, but was dismissed for dishonesty. In the country, at
Tixall, he knew a Jesuit named Evers, and through Evers he professed
to know much about the mythical plot to kill the King, and the rest
of the farrago of lies. At the trial of the five Jesuits, in June
1679, Dugdale told what he had told privately, under examination, on
March 21, 1679.* This revelation was that Harcourt, a Jesuit, had
written from town to Evers, a Jesuit at Tixall, by the night post of
Saturday, October 12, 1678, 'This very night Sir Edmundbury (sic)
Godfrey is dispatched.' The letter reached Tixall by Monday,
October 14.

*Fitzherbert MSS; State Trials, vii. 338.

Mr. Pollock writes: 'Dugdale was proved to have spoken on Tuesday,
October 15, 1678, of the death of a justice of the peace in
Westminster, which does not go far.'* But if this is PROVED, it
appears to go all the way; unless we can explain Dugdale's
information without involving the guilty knowledge of Harcourt. The
proof that Dugdale, on Tuesday, October 15, spoke at Tixall of
Godfrey's death, two days before Godfrey's body was found near
London, stands thus: at the trial of the Jesuits a gentleman,
Chetwyn, gave evidence that, on the morning of Tuesday, October 15,
a Mr. Sanbidge told him that Dugdale had talked at an alehouse about
the slaying of a justice of peace of Westminster. Chetwyn was