The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories [20]
FRANS. VERNON.
*State Papers, France, vol. 126.
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Note VI. The Ambassador Montague to Arlington.*
Paris: June 22, 1669.
My Lord,
. . . . . .
The Lieutenant criminel hath proceeded pretty farre with Le Roux Marsilly. The crime they forme their processe on beeing a rape which he had formerly committed at Nismes soe that he perceiving but little hopes of his life, sent word to the King if hee would pardon him he could reveale things to him which would concerne him more and be of greater consequence to him, than his destruction.
*State Papers, France, vol. 126.
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Note VII. The same to the same.
Paris: June 26, '69. My Lord,
. . . . . .
I heard that Marsilly was to be broke on the wheel and I gave order then to one of my servants to write Mr. Williamson word of it, soe I suppose you have heard of it already: they hastened his execution for feare he should have dyed of the hurt he had done himself the day before; they sent for a minister to him when he was upon the scaffold to see if he would confesse anything, but he still persisted that he was guilty of nothing nor DID NOT KNOW WHY HE WAS PUT TO DEATH. . . .
III. THE MYSTERY OF SIR EDMUND BERRY GODFREY
When London was a pleasanter place than it is to-day, when anglers stretched their legs up Tottenham Hill on their way to fish in the Lee; when the 'best stands on Hackney river' were competed for eagerly by bottom fishers; when a gentleman in St. Martin's Lane, between the hedges, could 'ask the way to Paddington Woods;' when a hare haunted Primrose Hill and was daily pursued by a gallant pack of harriers; enfin, between three and four on the afternoon of October 17, 1678, two common fellows stepped into the White House tavern in the fields north of Marylebone, a house used as a club by a set of Catholic tradesmen. They had been walking in that region, and, as the October afternoon was drawing in, and rain was falling, they sought refuge in the White House. It would appear that they had not the means of assuaging a reasonable thirst, for when they mentioned that they had noticed a gentleman's cane, a scabbard, a belt, and some add a pair of gloves, lying at the edge of a deep dry ditch, overgrown with thick bush and bramble, the landlord offered the new comers a shilling to go and fetch the articles.* But the rain was heavy, and probably the men took the shilling out in ale, till about five o'clock, when the weather held up for a while.
*A rather different account by the two original finders, Bromwell and Walters, is in L'Estrange's Brief History, iii. pp. 97, 98. The account above is the landlord's. Lords' MSS., Hist. MSS. Com., xi. pp. 2, 46, 47.
The delay was the more singular if, as one account avers, the men had not only observed the cane and scabbard outside of the ditch, on the bank, but also a dead body within the ditch, under the brambles.* By five o'clock the rain had ceased, but the tempestuous evening was dark, and it was night before Constable Brown, with a posse of neighbours on foot and horseback, reached the ditch. Herein they found the corpse of a man lying face downwards, the feet upwards hung upon the brambles; thus half suspended he lay, and the point of a sword stuck out of his back, through his black camlet coat.** By the lights at the inn, the body was identified as that of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, a Justice of the Peace for Westminster, who had been missing since Saturday October 12. It is an undeniable fact that, between two and three o'clock, before the body was discovered and identified, Dr. Lloyd, Dean of St. Asaph's, and Bishop Burnet, had heard that Godfrey had been found in Leicester Fields, with his own sword in his body. Dr. Lloyd mentioned his knowledge in the funeral sermon of