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n Long before Primrose Hill in London became thenfashionable stamping ground of sundry celebrities, it was just fields and opennfarmland, noted for its eponymous yellow spring flowers and ubiquitousnbrambles. In the afternoon of Thursday October 17th 1768, under angrey sky darkened with heavy cloud, two men, Bromwell and Walters, were outnwalking in these fields and took refuge from the coming downpour in the WhitenHouse tavern (later the Chalk Hill Farm tavern).
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| Primrose Hill – White House Tavern marked in red. |
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nAs the heavens opened outside,nthey mentioned to the landlord, John Rawson, that they had seen a cane and somengloves lying in the bushes on their way there. The landlord offered them anshillings worth of ale if they would go back and fetch them, but the heavyntorrents of rain kept them inside until about 5 pm when, during a briefnrespite, they went back and found not only a cane and gloves but, at the bottomnof the ditch and hidden in the brambles, the dead body of a man.
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nRawson broughtna constable, Brown, and a posse of locals, and with difficulty in thenthickening darkness, they lifted the body out of the ditch. He had been hangingnhead first and face downwards in it, with his arms awry and his legs suspendednin the thicket of brambles. A sword had been thrust through his body sonforcefully that six inches of the blade emerged from his back. Scattered aroundnhim lay his hat, his wig, a belt, his gloves and cane, and a scabbard; he hadnthree rings on his fingers and there was a large aamount of money in hisnpockets. Constable Brown, with a struggle, pulled the sword from the body, tonmake it easier to move, and it was laid on two staves and carried back to thentavern. Once brought into the candlelight, the man was recognised as Sir EdmundnBerry Godfrey, a very well known magistrate who had been missing for five days.
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| Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey |
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nHis two brothers and his brother-in-law, Mr Plucknet, were brought and formallynidentified the body, and on the following morning, Mr Cooper, coroner ofnMiddlesex, and eighteen jurymen began the inquest, which lasted for two days,nresulting in a verdict that Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey had been strangled tondeath by persons unknown with a piece of linen cloth.
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nThere were extensivenbruises from the neck to the top of the stomach, as if he had been stamped onnor hit repeatedly with a heavy weapon, a large contusion below one ear, thicknpurple creases around the throat and the neck had been broken. There was anwound on the chest, as deep as a rib, and another from the transfixing sword,nwhich had pierced the heart and been driven through the body. The sword was SirnEdmund’s own weapon. As the clothing was not bloodstained, and no blood hadnbeen seen in the ditch, it was obvious that the body had been stabbed afterndeath.
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nTwo witnesses testified that they had been hunting with dogs on thenTuesday and Wednesday at the place where the body had been found, and the bodynwas not there at the time, as their harriers would have definitely scented itnout. Other witnesses said that they had seen Sir Edmund alive on SaturdaynOctober 12th, after which he had gone missing. He had not beennkilled during a robbery, as he still had on his rings and a substantial sum ofnmoney with him; it was decided that he had been strangled elsewhere and thenbody taken to Primrose Hill, where it had been stabbed and thrown into the ditch.
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| Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey |
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nSir Edmund Berry Godfrey had been a respected coal and firewood merchant whonbecame a Justice of the Peace and had remained at his post in London during thenplague of 1665, during which time he did much to retain order and for whichnservices he was knighted by King Charles II. He had been imprisoned in 1669,nwhen he had the King’s physician arrested for not paying his bills for coal,nclaiming that whereas the judges had found for him, the King had overriddenntheir ruling. After six days on hunger strike in gaol, the decision wasnoverturned and he was released. Godfrey was considered to be a littleneccentric, as he preferred the company of ordinary, working men to that of hisnhigher-born peers. Although a strict Anglican himself, he was known to have hadna number of close Catholic friends. And this may well have been behind hisnbrutal murder.
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nThere was a very strong anti-Catholic sentiment innGreat Britain at the time, which had its roots in Henry VIII’s split with thenChurch of Rome and in the Reformation. Protestants had gained the ascendancy innHenry’s day, only to have it replaced by a backlash under Mary I. Elizabeth Inhad restored England to Protestantism and James I had furthered that position.nThere had been a number of plots against Protestant monarchs, with Catholicsnbeing held responsible for the Ridolfi Plot, the Babington Plot, the SpanishnArmada, the Gunpowder Plot and the Great Fire of London. When Charles II becamenKing, in 1660, it was widely feared that he would return the country to Catholicism,nnot least because his wife, Catherine of Braganza, and his brother the Duke ofnYork were devout Catholics.
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| King Charles II |
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nIn fact, Charles had signed the secretnTreaty of Dover, by which he would receive aid from King Louis XIV of France,nin return for a public declaration that he had converted to Catholicism and thenabandonment of the Triple Alliance with Sweden and the Dutch (there was, ofncourse, much more to it than that, but that’s the gist of it). The Earl ofnShaftesbury learned of the Treaty and gathered a group of like-mindednindividuals to oppose the King, the so-called Green Ribbon Club, which soughtnto restore a republic nominally headed by Richard Cromwell. The first meetingnof this Club was at The Swan tavern in Hammersmith, an inn owned by one of thenClub’s members – Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey.
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| Titus Oates |
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nNot long after, in September 1678,nGodfrey was required to hear an oath sworn by Titus Oates, a former Anglicannminister who had, allegedly, converted to Catholicism. Oates claimed that henhad evidence that there was a Catholic plot afoot to assassinate the King, andnhe needed to swear an oath that his testimony before the Privy Council would benthe truth. Godfrey was doubtful of the veracity of Oates’s claims and asked tonsee copies, with which he was duly presented. There are suspicions that Godfreynsaw the name of one of his Catholic friends, Edward Colman, on Oates’s list ofnconspirators and warned him. Oates had been trying to draw attention to hisnsupposed conspiracy for a while but had not really been taken seriously – evennthe King himself was reported to have had doubts that Oates’s information wasngenuine. But Godfrey’s murder provided the catalyst that sparked intense newninterest in his claims.
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| The ‘Godfrey‘ medal |
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nEverywhere in London, there were whispers and rumours.nBallads were composed in Godfrey’s honour, a medal was struck depicting thenPope himself as the murderer, one broadsheet sold ten thousand copies in lessnthan a month, and one enterprising cutler produced a memorial dagger, with thenwords ‘Remember the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey’ inscribed on onenside of the blade and ‘Religion’ on the other side. He sold threenthousand in a single day, the Duke of York was presented with a special, giltnversion (ironically, as he was a Catholic) and titled ladies slept with ‘Godfrey’ndaggers under their pillows.
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| A ‘Godfrey‘ dagger |
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nThe Countess of Shaftesbury had a matched pair ofnpocket pistols custom-made for her to carry in her muff. The body of thenmurdered magistrate was laid in state in London for two days, where thousandsnqueued to see it, before it was carried to St Martin’s in the Field, with anprocession of seventy-two clergymen leading the way. Dr Lloyd gave thenelaborate eulogy, and two able-bodied clergymen, ready to defend him from thenexpected attack by Catholics, flanked him in the pulpit (it didn’t come).nCatholics were banned from a ten-mile radius of the city centre.
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| The Funeral of Sir E B Godfrey |
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nOnly one thingnwas missing – the identity of the murderer.
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