Lawrence Hill, servant to Dr. Thomas Godden [q. v.], treasurer of the chapel, and Henry Berry, porter of Somerset House. Meanwhile Prance watched one of the gates to prevent interruption. The body was kept at Somerset House till the following Wednesday night, when it was carried by easy stages in a sedan chair to Primrose Hill, and left as it was found. Prance said that he afterwards attended a meeting of jesuits and priests at Bow to celebrate the deed. Green, Hill, and Berry were arrested. Before the trial Prance recanted his story, but a few days later reasserted its truth. On 5 Feb. 1678–9 he swore in court to his original declaration. Bedloe appeared to corroborate it, and deposed to offers of money being made to him by Lefaire, Pritchard, and other priests early in October to join in the crime. But his allegation did not agree in detail with Prance's statement. One of Godfrey's servants swore that Hill and Green had called with messages at her master's house on or before the fatal Saturday. The prisoners strenuously denied their guilt, and called witnesses to prove an alibi. They were, however, convicted. Green and Hill, both Roman catholics, were hanged at Tyburn on 21 Feb., and Berry, in consideration of his being a protestant, a week later. On 8 Feb. Samuel Atkins, a servant of Pepys, was tried as an accessory before the fact on Bedloe's evidence. But Bedloe's story was so flimsy that Atkins was acquitted.
The populace was satisfied. Primrose Hill, which had been known at an earlier period as Greenberry Hill, was rechristened by that name in reference to the three alleged murderers. Somerset House was nicknamed Godfrey Hall. Illustrated broadsides set forth all the details of the alleged murder there. But Prance was at once suspected by sober critics of having concocted the whole story, which Bedloe alone had ventured to corroborate. He was soon engaged in a paper warfare with Sir Roger L'Estrange and other pamphleteers who doubted his evidence. ‘A Letter to Miles Prance,’ signed Trueman (1680), was answered by Prance in ‘Sir E. B. G.'s Ghost,’ which in its turn was answered by ‘A second Letter to Miles Prance’ (13 March 1681–2). The ‘Loyal Protestant Intelligencer’ on 7 and 11 March 1681–2 severely denounced the trial of Green, Berry, and Hill as judicial murder. Immediately afterwards the theory of Godfrey's suicide was revived. On 20 June 1682 Nathaniel Thompson, William Pain, and John Farwell were found guilty at Westminster of having circulated pamphlets discrediting the justice of the trial of Green, Berry, and Hill, and with having asserted that Godfrey killed himself. They were sentenced to fines of 100l. each, while Thompson and Farwell had in addition to stand in the pillory in Old Palace Yard. Some new evidence was adduced at their trial to show that Godfrey was undoubtedly murdered, but no clue to the perpetrators was discovered. Prance's story was finally demolished when on 15 June 1686 he pleaded guilty to perjury in having concocted all his evidence. He was fined 100l., and was ordered to stand in the pillory, and to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn.
The mystery remains unsolved. The most probable theory is that Oates and his desperate associates caused Godfrey to be murdered to give colour to their false allegations, and to excite popular opinion in favour of their agitation.
A portrait of Godfrey hangs in the vestry-room of the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. An engraving by Van Houe is prefixed to Tuke's ‘Memoires,’ 1682. In 1696 Godfrey's brother Benjamin repaired the tablet above the grave of their younger brother (1628–40) in the east cloister of Westminster, and added a Latin inscription giving the date of Sir Edmund's murder. A silver tankard, now belonging to the borough of Sudbury, Suffolk, bears Godfrey's arms and an inscription recounting his services at the plague and fire of London. It is apparently a copy, made for Godfrey for presentation to a friend, of the tankard presented to him by Charles II in 1666. An engraving is in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ 1848, pt. ii. p. 483. Seven medallion-portraits of Godfrey are in the British Museum. (For engravings of these see Pinkerton, Medallions relating to History of England, plate xxxv.)
[Tuke's Memoires of the Life and Death of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, Lond. 1682, dedicated to Charles II, with two poems on the murder appended, ‘Bacchanalia’ and ‘The Proclamation Promoted;’ Nichols's Topographer and Genealogist, 1852, ii. 459 et seq.; W. Lloyd's Funeral Sermon, 1678; Howell's State Trials, vi. 1410 et seq., vii. 159 et seq., viii. 1378–80; Aubrey's Lives in Letters from the Bodleian Library, ii. 359; Pepys's Diary; Luttrell's Brief Relation; Reresby's Memoirs, ed. Cartwright; Burnet's Own Time; Gent. Mag. 1848, ii. 483–90; Cat. of Prints in Brit. Mus. (Satirical), i.; Thornbury and Walford's Old and New London; Macaulay's History; Hallam's History; John Pollock's The Popish Plot, 1903. The True and Perfect Narrative, 1678, supplies an impartial account of the finding of the body and the inquest. Prance's True Narrative and Discovery, 1679; his Additional Narrative, 1679; his Lestrange a Papist, 1681; his Solemn Protestation against Lestrange, 1682, and A Succinct Narrative with Prance's story repeated, 1683, give Prance's allegations. The
