The Strange Death of Edmund Godfrey

by Alan Marshall

  It is difficult to convey the depth of hatred towards Roman Catholicism in seventeenth-century England. The nation’s view of popery was based upon a long tradition of myth, bigotry, stupidity and, just occasionally, a little reality. The myth, founded in the sixteenth century during the age of the Reformation and religious wars, was contained in the many commemorations of victory over the popish church that were still widely celebrated in the English calendar. From Queen Elizabeth’s accession (17 November 1558) to victory over the Spanish Armada (1588) to Gunpowder Plot day (5 November 1605), the English calendar was spotted with such events and they invariably kept the ‘evils’ of Roman Catholicism in the forefront of the English mind. As protectors of the citadel of the Protestant faith in Europe, the English should have felt secure. Yet it was commonly believed that underground sapping and mining from ‘papists’ still continued against both them and their religion; there were some obvious signs of this for those who would look hard enough. In Europe wars and conflicts raged and the major Catholic power of the era, the France of Louis XIV, seemed to outside observers to be bent upon a continental hegemony. There were also apparent ‘traitors’ in the English camp itself. They were to be found within the small but dogged Roman Catholic population who had survived all of the great traumas of the period, and in the little pocket of fashionable Catholics who clustered around the libertine court of Charles II.

  Roman Catholics in general were believed by the Protestant English to be capable of any action that would bring about the triumph of their church, yet the proportion of the nation who still worshipped in the old religion was in reality quite small – about 4.7 per cent – and they did so under sporadic persecution.10 Fines and punishment tended to fluctuate with political circumstances. Nonetheless, practical indulgence to papists was also sometimes to be found at the local level. Alongside the connivance of local officers and the mixed messages on religious policy that frequently issued from the government, the small, largely rural and gentrybased, Roman Catholic population went about their business in the remoter and more backward areas of the kingdom. If they sometimes kept out of the way, they were also part of that neighbourly feeling and county gentry community typical of English rural life. As John Miller has noted, in ‘a crisis gentlemen and even priests might stress that although they were Papists, they were also gentlemen’ and part of the county community.11 So ‘popery’ survived in spite of the problems it faced. Yet Roman Catholics were still barred from holding office and calamities such as the plague and Great Fire of London often raised religious tensions to such heights that the Catholic community remained an easy target for persecution.

  At court, on the other hand, the tolerant atmosphere engendered by Charles II proved a mixed blessing.12 Everyone knew the court was a place of vice and luxury, and the fear that a growing clique of Catholics, as well as their converts, could control the government is visible in the periodic attempts to break up such groups through a test of official loyalty. A Test Act had in fact been passed by parliament in 1673 and it had driven many Catholics from the government, including the king’s own brother James. In theory, all office-holders were to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, declare against transubstantiation and take the sacraments of the established church. It was intended to be a means of ensuring that Roman Catholics could not slip into office; but they soon returned. The typical court Catholic tended either to be of foreign origin – the Irish were particularly visible – or to be more cosmopolitan than their more rural brethren. Also typical was the stream of notable converts to the religion who were in close proximity to the king, including his mistresses and his brother. It was even quietly rumoured that Charles himself had also shown an interest in conversion, despite his position as head of the Church of England. Roman Catholic conversion for a while became a favourite pastime in which the rich courtier could indulge his fancies. With Catholic royal chapels based at Somerset House and St James’s Palace – the residences of the queen (the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza), and the Duke and Duchess of York respectively – as well as various ambassadorial chapels available, conversion became socially acceptable. Unfortunately, serious court Catholics were prone to ideas and whispered plans for the eventual reconversion of the whole English nation. Equally significant was the presence of a high proportion of less well-known Catholics in London. Within the local population, freedom to worship in the metropolis was, if not more open, at least rather easier. Periodically, the government made attempts to prevent Londoners attending such places of worship but these were generally ineffective. One contemporary thought that there were around 10,000 Catholics in the West End alone in 1669, but as John Miller has shown in his work, in reality the numbers were much smaller. The London Catholics were also often drawn from the energetic artisan and shopkeeper class, who were an important part of the London scene, and Edmund Godfrey was not alone in coming into daily contact with them.13

  Despite the reality of the situation, the cry of ‘no popery’ and the belief in a beleaguered English nation began to be ever more topical on the floor of the House of Commons and in the country at large. Andrew Marvell, the poet, Member of Parliament and propagandist, spelled out this threat most ably in plain language in the 1670s: ‘There has now for divers Years, [he said,] a Design been carried on to change the Lawful Government of England into an Absolute Tyranny and to Convert the Established Protestant Religion into down-right Popery.’14 To the true believer this mythical Popish Plot became a real one. The Pope in Rome and his secret legions, including his particular henchmen the Society of Jesus or Jesuits, were attempting to undermine English life and liberties. Secret designs were ongoing which, if they succeeded, would mean the destruction of the English Protestant establishment. In this mythological world of rant and fear, it was believed that these designs would inevitably lead to the widespread slaughter of Protestant men, women and children, the end of property ownership and of England itself as the average English Protestant knew it. Here, for example, is one author’s view of what would happen to the English should the Roman Catholics succeed in their designs:

  Your wives [would be] prostituted to the lust of every savage bogtrotter, your daughters ravished by goatish monks, your small children tossed upon pikes, or torn limb from limb, while you have your own bowls ripped up . . . and holy candles made of your grease (which was done within our memory in Ireland) your dearest friends flaming in Smithfield, foreigners rending your poor babes that can escape everlasting slaves, never more to see a Bible, nor hear the joyful sounds of Liberty and Property. This, this[,] gentlemen, is Popery[!].15

  The idea that previous attempts had been made to destroy the nation were, of course, ingrained within the English Protestant psyche, and indeed proved that these designs were both widespread and still current. The very belief itself proved the fact and logic had little to do with it. The horrors of the reign of ‘Bloody Mary’ (1553–8), the attempted Spanish invasion of 1588, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, the massacres of Protestants in Ireland in 1641, the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, even the execution of Charles I in 1649, were all considered historical proof that these designs were ever present. English men and women avidly read gorily illustrated versions of these tales. That the plot did not exist did not make the myth any less potent and it was soon, taken in conjunction with Danby’s failed attempts to govern the parliament, seen as the latest attack on Protestant English liberties and fed by growing hostility to the government’s intrigues with the French. As we have seen, the latter were now being considered not just as purveyors of popery, a role once filled by Spain, but as genuine economic and international rivals.16

  Above all of this speculation there was, however, one tangible reality: the heir to the throne. By 1678 James, Duke of York, was some forty-five years of age and possessed extensive experience as a politician, although it is doubtful whether he had really learned very much.17 His reputation was blighted in contemporary eyes by his religion. He was a Roman Catholic convert. The ma
n himself was certainly suspect in any case, but his openly expressed religious beliefs created enormous difficulties for the king and government. Although James was neither Lord Macaulay’s melodramatic villain, twirling his moustache as he planned to force England back to Rome, nor the historian F.C. Turner’s syphilitic incompetent, he did present a difficult problem both for the king, his brother, and the English nation.18 His short-lived popularity as a soldier and sailor had not survived his open conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1673. Indeed, it was his conversion, even more than his stubborn and wilful character, that was to raise the greatest fears and become a primary justification for the crisis which was to strike the country in the late 1670s. The duke’s conversion had been a long drawn-out affair, and when rumours of his inclination were finally confirmed in 1673 the fear that a future Catholic monarch would introduce tyranny and arbitrary government, and overthrow English liberties, genuinely raised the hackles of many people in government and in the country. The duke himself did not help matters, nor did he do anything to dispel a growing belief that he had violent and bloody nature. He was seen as a man who would, given the chance, take the worst of counsels in all of his affairs. He had married his second wife, an Italian Catholic princess, in 1673 in spite of parliament’s protestations about the matter, and he was already beginning to be perceived as a threat to the state before the Popish Plot crisis exploded.

  The Duke of York had little real understanding of the peculiarly vexed relationship between the English and popery over the years. Indeed, he held to rather simplistic views in general. Dissenters for him were merely Republicans in another guise. Church of England men were dismissed as lapsed or closet Catholics who, with a push in the right direction, could join him in rediscovering the glories of Roman Catholicism and all opposition was regarded as treasonous to a greater or lesser extent. The duke, much as his father Charles I had done, had swallowed the dominant ideology of European monarchy – the divine right of kings. If many saw his views as deluded, then he certainly did not. The immense personal satisfaction that the Duke of York drew from his religious beliefs has led John Miller to argue rightly that after the execution of his father, conversion was undoubtedly the most important experience of James’s life. And like so many converts to a new faith, the duke naturally wanted to share his new-found religion with others. He became fervent in the promulgation of his faith, as well as hostile to those who sought to change his mind. A rather humourless man of simple beliefs, James would never become a wily pragmatist like his brother Charles. He was marked out from an early age as obstinate, narrow-minded, rigid and lacking in imagination, and all opposition appeared to him to stem from the worst of motives. Ironically the Duke of York was also one of the most English of the Stuarts and a mulish patriot of sorts. Indeed, courtiers often claimed that the country had ‘a martial prince who [not only] loved glory, [but] who would bring France into [a] humble . . . dependence upon us’. But whatever his merits as a man and soldier, ultimately his devout Roman Catholicism always stood in the way of his total acceptance by the English people.19

  The Duke of York’s objectives for his fellow Catholics have been subject to continual debate since the seventeenth century.20 The revisionist view argues that James understood, if not very well, the difficulties facing the minority religion of English Catholicism. He simply wanted equal rights for Roman Catholics, to be followed in time by secure civil rights. His apparent hastiness in religious matters has frequently been put down to his age, but it is equally likely to have been the product of years of frustration in playing second fiddle to his brother Charles. Charles’s tactics often infuriated James. The king’s attitude to Catholicism was an indulgent one; he seems to have found within it a satisfactory monarchical creed that was lacking in the established church. Yet Charles remained at heart a cynical pragmatist, and whatever his true attachment to the Catholicism he would never stake everything on a change of religion. Fear of a return into exile, the inordinate amount of effort required to carry out such a project and the secret treaty of Dover led the king to walk warily before bestirring the English lion of religious prejudice. In 1670 he had entered into a secret treaty with Louis XIV to launch a war against their mutual enemy, the Dutch Republic. As part of the treaty, and in return for money, Charles had agreed, at some vague time in the future, to convert to Roman Catholicism. It was not clear that the English nation itself was to follow him in this course, but Louis did agree to supply Charles with troops should the conversion go badly wrong. Had news of this secret deal leaked out, it is likely that the English would have revolted against their king’s actions. Thereafter the king was more circumspect in matters relating to his Catholic subjects. In the main, he did what he could to bring toleration to bear upon suffering papists – when it suited his own needs and aims. On the other hand, James was frustrated. In January 1679 he wrote revealingly about how Charles should have followed ‘bold and resolute councells, and [stuck] to them . . . measures must be taken and not departed from [and a King] should steer another course, and looke out for another passage, which no doubt may be found, to gett on’s port’.21 Above all else, a visible support for his church was in order. James had previously written, and openly expressed the view, that ‘I cannot be more Catholic than I am’. His wife was also aware of how immovable his beliefs were, noting in 1674 that he was ‘firm and steady in our holy religion . . . [and] he would not leave it for anything in the world’.22 He also sought to protect his servants from persecution, and one of these servants was the cadaverous Edward Coleman.

  Edward Coleman was born the son of a Suffolk parson.23 He was a well-off Catholic convert, but he spent extravagantly in his youth and in 1671 he sought employment in the service of the Duke of York. James, of course, favoured him as a convert and Coleman, a dynamic man, was both enthusiastic and eager to convert others. When James married princess Mary of Modena, Coleman was made her secretary, but he remained very much the duke’s man at heart. Coleman’s vanity and meddling proved a constant theme of his career. It got him into frequent trouble and his boldness was eventually to cost him his place. He was an unprepossessing figure: lean with black eyes, a great believer in fasting, and ever eager for gossip and news. Yet Coleman must have had some charms, for his circle of friends was wide and he was a busy man in the 1670s. He maintained an open house to the important people of society. Courtiers, judges and Members of Parliament all frequented his home and provided him with the latest gossip.

  Featuring in this crowd was Edmund Godfrey. It is not clear where the two men met, although Godfrey had had some business dealings with the duke’s household in the past and the connection is likely to have stemmed from them. Whatever the basis for their friendship, it seems to have prospered sufficiently for Godfrey to get to know Coleman quite well. Godfrey may also have been involved in Coleman’s other business venture. This was far more significant than trading in political gossip, for Coleman had initiated a correspondence, at first upon James’s behalf, with a number of people at the French court and in the Vatican in order to raise funds for the monarchy. He had also forged links with the French ambassador. Most importantly, he had begun a correspondence with Louis XIV’s confessor. Coleman’s dealings with Father Ferrier in 1674 and then his successor Father La Chaise had been extensive. Naturally he used this correspondence to gain information about affairs in France and was quite indiscreet about affairs in England. As a believer in the conversion of the English nation to Roman Catholicism, he tended to write at length on this matter. It was: ‘the mighty work . . . no less than the conversion of three kingdoms and by that perhaps the subduing of a pestilent heresy which has domineered over the great part of this northern world a long time; there was never such hopes of success since the days of Queen Mary as now in our days.’24

  This, then, was the main business of Coleman in the 1670s, which in the end, as we shall see, was to result in his trial and execution as a prime suspect in the Popish Plot. There is little doubt that various s
ums of money, in addition to dangerous and indiscreet correspondence, had passed through his hands. Some of these funds stuck to his fingers, but the French ambassador had given the bulk of them to him to use as bribes. Coleman in turn bribed Members of Parliament and courtiers alike in an attempt to win their favour for what he believed were his master James’s own wishes. His lavish hospitality was also used to win people over to his point of view. At his home there continued to be much political gossip and Coleman frequently exaggerated his talents of persuasion. At the same time his newsletters circulated far and wide, gathering and promulgating the views he wished others to hear. In August 1676 he fell foul of the Privy Council over his involvement in the publication of a book defending papal authority. The Bishop of London, Henry Compton, who was a Danby client and hostile to Coleman’s meddling, attempted to have Coleman removed. Although James was persuaded to dismiss his servant this did not prevent him from continuing to use Coleman in an unofficial capacity. It is difficult to say to what extent James was aware of Coleman’s activities throughout 1674–6.25 The greatest period of Coleman’s life occurred in 1674–6 when he was at the centre of a number of Catholic intrigues. After this his correspondence slackened as his influence waned. However, Coleman was regarded as an ‘ill man’ and an obvious target for informers, especially if his correspondence about the great design to reconvert the English nation was discovered.