The Strange Death of Edmund Godfrey

by Alan Marshall

  But to follow this line of argument we must really explain the Godfrey brothers’ actions and motives. Would they have really undertaken such extreme measures to obscure the real cause of death just to save the estate and the family’s reputation, and then knowingly send three innocent men to the gallows? Or did the events all too soon escape their control because they were at first unaware of the recent important political aspects of their brother’s dealings? Certainly Michael Godfrey had the toughness and connections to carry out this cover-up. In the 1670s and 1680s he was very much the City politician. He had entered into opposition circles and continued to be active throughout the Exclusion Crisis. He was certainly more ambitious, more successful and better connected than his brother Edmund. Indeed, Michael had always shown the correct proportions of gravity, attention to detail and will that made the successful businessman. In 1643 as a young man he had openly stated his ambitions to his great friend Thomas Papillon. Michael promised that if he ever became Mayor of London his friend would be his swordbearer with £200 a year for his pains.70 This was no mere musing for the ambitious young man; he had the Godfrey drive and ambition to achieve many things. Active in the mid-1670s against the government, this pattern to his career continued in the period after his brother’s death. He was a hard-edged merchant politician benefiting from being the brother of the martyr. He was there at all of the major events in the City. He sat on the grand jury that brought in an ignoramus or not-proven verdict in 1681 when the government tried to find treason charges against Shaftesbury. Michael’s movements and attitudes were thus suspicious. He was not called at the trial or inquest to give evidence about his brother, but he was always there in the background. He swiftly took control of his brother’s papers; he was at the inquest, at Mrs Gibbon’s home, at the funeral, at the Lords Committee, at the trials, always, or so it seems, pushing for the solution that the Roman Catholics had murdered his brother. Finally, what would be his motivation for such an action? Ambition and power perhaps, shame, as well as fearing the loss of his brother Edmund’s property, much of which eventually passed to him. Did Moor and Edmund’s brothers find him dead and use his death for their own cause? Was the mystery of Edmund Godfrey ultimately not really a mystery at all, but merely an unfortunate death in the family?

  Epilogue: Memorials

  On the wall of the east cloister of Westminster Abbey, ignored by the many tourists who daily pass through and who only occasionally glance at it, lies a memorial to Edmund Godfrey. In 1696 Edmund’s brother Benjamin decided to make an addition to the family memorial already in place there. This addition is in Latin, which no doubt accounts for the general lack of interest shown by modern tourists. But since there is no known grave for the magistrate whose death sparked off such a crisis in London in the autumn of 1678, it makes interesting reading:

  EDMUNDUS BERRY GODFREY, equestri dignitate ob merita sua in Regem et Patriam ornatus, Justitiarii munere singulari fide et diligentia functus, demum ab oculis suorum ereptus, iv, idus Octobris MDCLXXVIII. Post quintum diem repertus est morete affectus nefaria et atroci; caetera Historia loquetur. Hoc monumentum vetustate attritum reparavit, addito fratris Edmundi elogio, Benjaminus ex filiis Thomae Godfrey predicti natu mimimus et nunc solus superstes, iv Aprilis MDCXCVI.

  [Edmund Berry Godfrey made knight on account of his loyal service to king and country. He discharged [the] office of magistrate with notable trustworthiness and diligence, was finally snatched from the eyes of his family, 4 days before [the] ides of October 1678. Five days later he was discovered murdered in a shocking and criminal manner and of the other details let History speak. This monument was repaired having been eroded by time, with an addition of a eulogy of his brother Edmund, by Benjamin, the youngest son of Thomas Godfrey and the rest of his line, 4 April 1696.]

  In the end only one man could really have explained the strange death of Edmund Godrey and that was Godfrey himself. By 3 o’clock on Saturday 12 October 1678, however, he had disappeared into oblivion. We can follow him that far but no further. For the rest we must observe the words written on his memorial: caetera Historia loquetur, ‘let History speak’.

  Notes

  All volumes were published in London unless otherwise stated.

  INTRODUCTION: A DEATH IN THE FAMILY

  1. R. L’Estrange, A Brief History of the Times (1688), III, pp. 212–13. N. Thompson, A true and perfect narrative of the late terrible and bloody Murther of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey who was found murthered on Thursday the 17th of this instant October in a field near Primrose Hill with a full accompt of the manner in which he was found also the full proceedings of the Coroner who sat upon the inquest &c (1678). Sir Edmundbury Godfrey’s ghost or an answer to Nathaniel Thompson’s second letter from Cambridge to Mr Miles Prance in relation to the murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey (second edn, 1682). T.B. Howell (ed.), State Trials (21 vols, 1816), VII, pp. 187–5. W. Thornbury and E. Walford, Old and new London, a narrative of its history, its people and its places (6 vols, 1873–8), V, pp. 287–90. G. Burnet, A history of my own time (2 vols, Oxford, 1897–1900), II, pp. 162–4. A.D. Webster, The Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill, history and antiquaries (1911), pp. 56–87.

  2. Previous work upon this subject includes L’Estrange, Times, III, pp. 168–299. R. North, Examen (1740), pp. 203–5. J. Pollock, The Popish Plot, a study in the history of the reign of Charles II (Cambridge, 1903). A. Marks, Who killed Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey? (1905). J. Dickson Carr, The Murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey (1936). S. Knight, The Killing of Justice Godfrey (1986). J.G. Muddiman, ‘The mystery of Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey’, The National Review (1924), 138–45. A. Marshall, ‘The Westminster magistrate and the Irish stroker: Sir Edmund Godfrey and Valentine Greatrakes, some unpublished correspondence’, Historical Journal, XL (1997), 499–505.

  3. The bloody murtherer, or, the unnatural son (Henry Jones) his just condemnation . . .for the murther of his mother Mrs Grace Jones &c (1672), p. 2.

  4. A. Conan Doyle, ‘Silver Blaze’, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Oxford, 1994), p. 4.

  1 FAMILY AND EARLY LIFE

  1. P. Laslett, ‘ The gentry of Kent in 1640’, Cambridge Historical Journal, IX (1948), 148–64. P. Clarke, English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution: Religion, Politics and Society in Kent, 1500–1640 (1977). S. Robertson, ‘Churches in Romney Marsh: Lydd’, Archaeologia Cantiana, XIII (1880), 440–1. E. Halstead, History of Kent (12 vols, 1897), VIII, p. 311. ‘The family of Godfrey’, Gentleman’s Magazine, CXXIII (1848), 483–90. F. Heal and C. Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500–1700 (1994).

  2. ‘Family of Godfrey’, pp. 483–90. ‘The Visitation of the county of Kent’, Archaeologia Cantiana, VI (1866), p. 260. J. Nichols, Topographer and Genealogist (3 vols, 1853), II, pp. 450–67.

  3. See C.W. Chalkin, Seventeenth-century Kent, a social and economic history (1965), p. 3.

  4. Ibid.

  5. ‘Visitation’, p. 264.

  6. Ibid., p. 265. British Library, Lansdowne MSS 235, ‘The domestic chronicle of Thomas Godfrey’. ‘Family of Godfrey’, pp. 483–90. ‘Visitation’, p. 260. Nichols, Topographer, II, pp. 450–67. Robertson, ‘Churches in Romney Marsh’, pp. 440–1. Halstead, History, VIII, p. 311. R.H. D’Elboux, ‘An armorial Lambeth Delf plate’, Archaeologia Cantiana, LX (1947), 121–2.

  7. BL, Lansdowne MSS 235, ‘The domestic chronicle of Thomas Godfrey’. ‘Family of Godfrey’, pp. 483–90 Nichols, Topographer, II, pp. 450–67.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Ibid. L.L. Peck, Northampton: Patronage and Policy at the Court of James I (1982), pp. 8–9.

  11. BL, Lansdowne MSS 235, ‘The domestic chronicle of Thomas Godfrey’. ‘Family of Godfrey’, pp. 483–90. Nichols, Topographer, II, pp. 450–67. R.M. Warnicke, William Lambarde, Elizabethan antiquary 1536–1661 (1973), p.138. Lambarde was also a historian of Kent.

  12. Peck,Northampton, pp. 60–3, 172, 174. Calendar of State Papers Domestic, (CPSD) 1619–16
23, p. 351.

  13. D’Elboux, ‘Armorial’, pp. 121–2. BL, Lansdowne MSS 235, ‘The domestic chronicle of Thomas Godfrey’. ‘Family of Godfrey’, pp. 483–90. Nichols, Topographer, II, pp. 450–67. A.N. Harrison, The family of Godfrey of Woodford, Essex and East Bergholt, Suffolk (Transactions of the Woodford and District Historical Society, pt. XII, 1966).

  14. ‘Family of Godfrey’, pp. 487–8. Godfrey of Woodford, pp. 5–12. The Godfrey children from the marriage of Thomas and Margaret Godfrey were: Lambard, Thomas (i). The second marriage of Thomas Godfrey, to Sarah Isles, resulted in eighteen children, the most notable being: unnamed twins, Jane, Thomas (ii), Peter, Richard, John, Edmund Berry, Elizabeth, Michael, Thomas (iii), Edward, Catherine, Benjamin, Sarah.

  15. BL, Lansdowne MSS 235, ‘The domestic chronicle of Thomas Godfrey’. ‘Family of Godfrey’, pp. 483–90.’ Nichols, Topographer, II, pp. 450–67. Peck, Northampton, p. 61. CSPD, 1619–1623, pp. 104, 111, 115, 121, 124, 136, 155, 249, 351.

  16. BL, Lansdowne MSS 235, ‘The domestic chronicle of Thomas Godfrey’. Nichols, Topographer, II, pp. 450–67. Dom. A. Bellenger English and Welsh Priests1558–1800, a working list (Downside Abbey, Bath, 1984), p. 38.

  17. As we shall see below in chapter three. Also see J. Stoye, English travellers abroad, 1604–1667 (revised edn, 1989), p. 183.

  18. BL, Lansdowne MSS 235, ‘The domestic chronicle of Thomas Godfrey’. ‘Family of Godfrey’, pp. 483–90. Nichols, Topographer, II, pp. 450–67. Clarke, English Provincial Society, p. 313. A. Everitt, The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion, 1640–1660 (Leicester, 1966), pp. 22, 74, 151, 152, 181. C.H. Firth, The Last Years of the Protectorate (2 vols, 1909), I, pp. 76.

  19. L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (1979 edn). P. Earle, A City Full of People, Men and Women of London, 1650–1750 (1994). K. Wrightson, English Society, 1580–1680 (1986), pp. 60–120. Heal and Holmes, Gentry, pp. 48–96.

  20. BL, Lansdowne MSS 235, ‘The domestic chronicle of Thomas Godfrey’. ‘Family of Godfrey’, pp. 483–90. Nichols, Topographer, II, pp. 450–67.

  21. Nichols, Topographer, II, pp. 450–67.

  22. Ibid. Everitt, Community of Kent, pp. 7–9. S.R. Gardiner, The History of England (10 vols, 1900), IX, pp. 84–118, 218,

  23. BL, Lansdowne MSS 235, ‘The domestic chronicle of Thomas Godfrey’. ‘Family of Godfrey’, pp. 483–90. Nichols, Topographer, II, pp. 450–67. W. Lloyd, A sermon at the funeral of Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey (1678), p. 24 claimed that Thomas was ‘sometimes afflicted with Melancholy, almost to Distractions, but it was before he was fifty years old, [and] he soon recovered of it’.

  24. BL, Lansdowne MSS 235, ‘The domestic chronicle of Thomas Godfrey’. ‘Family of Godfrey’, pp. 483–90. Nichols, Topographer, II, pp. 450–67.

  25. Nichols, Topographer, II, pp. 450–67. Also G.F. Russell Barker and A.H. Stenning, The Records of Old Westminster (2 vols, 1928), I, p. 378. R. Tuke, Memoires of the life and death of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey (1682), pp. 5–6.

  26. Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), Lambert Osbaldeston.

  27. J.A. Winn, John Dryden and his World (Yale, 1987), p. 38. Gardiner, History, VIII, p. 390.

  28. Winn, Dryden, p. 37.

  29. Ibid., pp. 39–41.

  30. Tuke, Memoires, p. 8–9.

  31. BL, Royal MSS 12 A, XII, ‘Viola Martia’, f.16.

  32. Ibid.

  33. J. Aubrey, Brief lives, chiefly of contemporaries, set down by John Aubrey, between the years 1669 and 1696, ed. A. Clark (2 vols, Oxford, 1898), I, p. 269. Alumni Oxonienses, the members of the university of Oxford, 1500–1714 (8 vols, 1891), II, p. 576.

  34. Tuke, Memoires, pp. 2–3. Aubrey, Brief Lives, I, p. 269. Lloyd, Sermon, p. 13.

  35. Tuke, Memoires, p. 8.

  36. Ibid. Aubrey, Brief Lives, I, p. 269. Marshall ‘The Westminster Magistrate’, pp. 499–505.

  37. Tuke, Memoires, p. 8. Lloyd, Sermon, p. 14, calls it ‘wanting health’. W.R. Prest, The Rise of the Barristers, a Social History of the English bar, 1590–1640 (Oxford, 1991).

  38. North, Examen, p. 199. L’Estrange, Times, III, pp. 174–5.

  39. L’Estrange, Times, III, pp. 174–5, 182. Lloyd, Sermon, p. 17–21.

  40. Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage, p. 242.

  41. For Godfrey’s opinions on women see National Library of Ireland, MSS 4728, ff. 8–9, 13. See also for more on gender relations in the period T. Henderson, Disorderly Women in Eighteenth-century London Prostitution and Control in the Metropolis 1730–1830 (1999). E.A Foyster, Manhood in early modern England honour, sex and marriage (1999).

  42. Tuke, Memoires, p. 9, Howell (ed.) State Trials, VII, p. 164. Thomas Robinson, a former schoolfriend of Godfrey’s, noted his absence from London during the civil war years.

  43. BL, Add. MSS 33578, f.33.

  44. BL, Add. Charters, 19471, ‘Will of Michael Godfrey (1689)’. J.R. Woodhead, The Rulers of London 1660–1689, a biographical record of the aldermen and common councilmen of the city of London (London and Middlesex Archeological Society, 1965), p. 77. A.F.W. Papillon, Memoirs of Thomas Papillon of London, merchant (1623–1702) (Reading, 1887), pp. 13, 18. CSPD, 1652–3, p. 68. I. Scouludi, ‘Thomas Papillon, merchant and Whig, 1623–1702’, Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, XVIII (1947), 49–72. Harrison, Godfrey of Woodford, p. 6. For Benjamin Godfrey see ‘Visitation’, p. 267.

  2 THE LONDON WOODMONGER

  1. Tuke, Memoires, pp. 11, 23. Lloyd, Sermon, p. 15.

  2. Tuke, Memoires, p. 20.

  3. See D. Piper, Catalogue of Seventeenth-century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, 1625–1714 (Cambridge, 1963), p. 141.

  4. See F. Sheppard, London, a history (Oxford, 1998), chapter 10. L. Beier and R. Findlay (eds), London, 1500–1700, the making of the metropolis (1986). N.G. Brett James, The Growth of Stuart London (1935). W.G. Bell, The Great Fire of London in 1666 (1920). S. Rappaport, Worlds within Worlds, Structures of Life in Sixteenth-century London (Cambridge, 1989). M.D. George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (1985 edn) S. Porter, The Great Fire of London (Stroud, 1996). R.M. Smuts, ‘The Court and its neighbourhood, royal policy and urban growth in the early Stuart West End’, Journal of British Studies, XXX (1991), 117–49. J. Stow, The survey of London (1987 edn). J. Schlör,Nights in the Big City: Paris, Berlin, London 1840–1930 (1998). B. Weinreb and C. Hibbert, The London Encyclopedia (1983).

  5. Brett James, Growth of Stuart London pp. 67–125, 126–82.

  6. See Boswell’s London Journal 1762–1763 ed. F.A. Pottle (1950), pp. 68–9.

  7. J. Evelyn, Fumifugium: or the Inconvenience of the Aer and Smoak of London Dissipated (1661)

  8. H. Peacham, ‘The art of living in London’ (1642) in X. Baron (ed.), London, 1066–1914, literary sources and documents (3 vols, Moorfield, 1997), I, p. 438.

  9. J. Gay, ‘Trivia; or the art of walking the streets of London’ (1716) in Baron, London, I, pp. 610–30. See also P. Hyland, Ned Ward, The London Spy (Lansing, Michigan, 1993).

  10. Gay, ‘Trivia’, in Baron, London, I, p. 611, lines 21–4.

  11. Ibid., I, pp. 616, 623, lines 227–30, 523–38. R. Ashton, ‘Samuel Pepys’ London’, The London Journal, XI (1985), 76.

  12. Gay, ‘Trivia’, in Baron, London, I, p. 621, lines 428–32.

  13. Gay, ‘Trivia’, in Baron, London, I, p. 617, lines 275–84.

  14. Ibid., pp. 627–8, lines 111–30.

  15. P. Earle, City Full of People, Men and Women in London, 1650–1750 (1994), pp. 217–21, 240–6. L.O. Pike, A history of crime in England (2 vols, 1876). J.A. Sharpe, Crime in seventeenth-century England: a county study (Cambridge, 1983). L.B. Faller, Turned to Account, the Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Later Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth century England (Cambridge 1987). R. Bryne, Prisons and Punishments of London (1992). C. Hibbert, The Road to Tyburn, the Story of Jack Sheppard and the Eighteenth-century Underworld (1957), pp. 19–20. K.M. Brown, ‘Gentlemen and thugs in
seventeenth-century Britain’, History Today, XL (1990), 27–32.

  16. Westminster City Archives, F1096, Parish Archives of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, Poor Rate Ledger, High Street, 1661, f. 7. F4533, Parish Archives of St Martin’s-in-the Fields, William Doddington, Constable’s Account, c. 1664, f.39. G.H. Galer and E.P. Wheeler, The survey of London, the Strand (1937), XVIII, p. 24. G.H. Galer and E.P. Wheeler, The Survey of London, Charing Cross, St Martin’s-in-the-Fields (1935) XVI, p. 261n. H.P. Wheatley and P. Lunnington, London Past and Present (3 vols, 1891), II, p. 151. A. Cowper Coles, ‘“A place much clogged and pestered with carts”, Hartshorne Lane and Angel Court, c. 1614–c. 1720’, London Topographical Record, XXVII (1995), 149–77.

  17. A. Stapleton, London Lanes (1930), pp. 97–8. Galer and Wheeler, The Strand, p.24. R. Seymour, A survey of the cities of London and Westminster, borough of Southwark and parts adjacent (2 vols, 1735), II, p. 654. Cowper Coles, ‘Hartshorne Lane and Angel Court’, pp. 149–77.