Victims of the Popish Plot of 1678 Trials
On February 10th, 1679, the Court of the King’s Bench bar opened the trial of Robert Green, Henry Berry, and Laurence Hill for the deliberate murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey. It wasn’t a trial in the meaning of the word as we use it now. The presiding judge, Lord Chief Justice Sir William Scroggs, is remembered now for his partiality, brutality, and fierce animosity toward Roman Catholics. Sir James Stephen notes in his History of the Criminal Law that at this period, neither judges nor attorneys had
“… any idea of the real character of court evidence.”
Hearsay and unsupported testimony were freely permitted. The judge would frequently conduct such cross-examination; the accused were not given access to legal representation, and while they were allowed to summon witnesses, the law did not allow them to be sworn in. They were also not given access to the evidence that would be used against them prior to the trial, which left them completely unprepared when they appeared in court. Green was illiterate, and Berry and Hill were common labourers, which put all three of them at a severe disadvantage. A skilled lawyer would have struggled to mount a convincing defence. In addition, a hostile mass of onlookers filled the courtroom.
The first witness was Titus Oates, who related how he had taken oaths before Godfrey and how the magistrate had told him in passing that “he went in fear of his life by the Popish party.” Mr. Robinson, a friend and former classmate of Sir Edmund, supported Titus Oates’ account. The next person called was Miles Prance, who reiterated the account from his confession. The next speaker was “Captain” Bedloe, who repeated his hearsay account of seeing Godfrey’s body in Somerset House in the sight of other men.
The prisoners called witnesses in their defence but did not personally address the court. Hill’s landlord, Mrs. Broadstreet, testified that he was always home by eight o’clock in the evening, could not have left without her knowledge, and could not have been keeping a body in the little apartment without her knowledge. Additionally speaking on behalf of Hill, Miss Tilden backed up the landlady’s testimony. Both of these women were Roman Catholics, and Judge Scroggs discovered that Mrs. Broadstreet’s brother was a priest. Both Robert Green’s landlord and his wife testified that he was home at the time of the suspected murder. Berry was defended by a corporal and two guardsmen who professed to have been present throughout the alleged body removal and to have remained at their positions the entire time. None of them claimed to have seen a sedan chair that night.
Justice Scroggs charged the jury with a biassed attack on the defendants at the conclusion of the trial, claiming that Bedloe’s testimony supported Miles Prance’s, that the night had been dark enough for a sedan chair to have slipped by the guards, that “devilish” priests were responsible for the crime, and that the alibis offered by Green and Hill were unreliable. In a ferocious outburst, he blasted Catholics in general as well as priests, and he dismissed the jury to study the facts. When they returned with a Guilty conviction after a brief absence, Justice Scroggs wholeheartedly agreed with their judgement, and “the whole assembly gave a huge scream of acclaim.”
All three men were given the death penalty the next day, and on February 21 and 22, 1679, respectively, Green and Hill and Berry were hanged at Tyburn. To the very end, all three insisted they were innocent.
There are several theories as to who actually killed Godfrey and why. Some claim Titus Oates did it on purpose to incite an anti-Catholic hysteria when his Popish Plot appeared to be in jeopardy of failing. Others continue to hold Green, Berry, and Hill accountable for their crimes. Strangely, some people believe Godfrey committed suicide because he felt so out of his element. However, it’s difficult to accept this explanation given how he managed to stab himself through the body, break his own neck with a handkerchief, and then dive headfirst into a thorn thicket.
Another theory, advanced by Sir John Pollock in his landmark work The Popish Plot (1903), holds that Godfrey made contact with his buddy to warn him of the impending storm after recognising Edward Colman’s name in Oates’ affidavit. It is a reality that Godfrey and Colman spoke urgently and privately shortly after, and it is a fact that Colman afterwards destroyed some of his personal writings.
Pollock hypothesised that Colman told Godfrey a secret, and that when word of it spread, Godfrey was assassinated. Pollock believed that this secret was that the Jesuit conspirators’ meeting had actually taken place in the Duke of York’s private quarters at St. James’s Palace rather than at the White Horse Tavern on The Strand. It wouldn’t have done to find out that the Duke had been implicated in a plot to assassinate the King and reinstate a Catholic hegemony, given he was the King’s brother and the next in line to the throne (he later became King James II).
Pollock’s theory is only flawed by the fact that James did meet Jesuits at St. James’s Palace on April 24, 1678, but this meeting was official in nature and was recorded, making it a very “open” secret. This is not to say, however, that Colman did not reveal to Godfrey another secret—a secret secret, about which we are completely in the dark—and that it was because of this that Godfrey was eliminated.
However, until some lost documents are discovered in the future, we will never know for sure why Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was killed. As we will see, he wasn’t the only person to pass away during the Popish Plot.
Postscript
In honour of the hanged men Green, Berry, and Hill, Primrose Hill was briefly known by the nickname Greenberry Hill among Londoners. Some writers, who are not aware with the specifics, assume that Greenberry Hill was the location’s original name and that Primrose Hill was given to it subsequently. In the intervening years, this Whig, anti-Catholic waggery spread like Topsy. The “coincidence” is alluring but completely fictitious. A report about the hanging of three men for the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey on Greenberry Hill in London was published in the New York Herald on November 26, 1911. This did not help the situation. Charles Hoy Fort, the renowned collector of the strange and interesting, included this in his book Wild Talents (1932). The murderers were identified as Green, Berry, and Hill. It does appear that this was purely an accident. Even so, it might not have been a coincidence but rather a brutal murderous pun.
The tale was made well-known in the present day at the start of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 film Magnolia, where it is stated to be true. People who should know better but need to go out more have firmly declared that this nonsense has some sort of supernatural meaning ever since internet woo merchants got their hands on the tale. There isn’t. This is not an accident. It’s just a joke. And you are the same if you think otherwise.
