Note 472 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY (continued 4)
Reading edition
The circumstances of this crime have remained an unsolved mystery. Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was found in a ditch near Primrose Hill on the evening of October 17, five days after his disappearance from his house in Green Lane, Strand, and five weeks after hearing Titus Oates swear to the existence of a Popish plot. Smith’s statement that he was murdered in Somerset House rests on the utterly corrupt and contradictory testimony of Miles Prance, the Roman Catholic silversmith. His evidence, however, sent three men to the gallows, who protested their innocence to the last. The whole subject is re-examined by Mr. Andrew Lang in Longman’s Magazine of August 1903.
Four different medals were struck to commemorate and characterise the murder. In one of these Godfrey is represented walking with a sword through his body, while on the reverse St. Denis is shown carrying his head in his hand, with the inscription—
“Godfrey walks uphill after he is dead; Dennis walks downhill carrying his head.”
The design of another medal illustrates Prance’s statement that Godfrey’s body was first moved from Somerset House in a sedan chair, and then on a horse to Primrose Hill.
The burial of the murdered Justice in St. Martin’s Church was attended by more than a thousand people of distinction, and his portrait was placed in the vestry-room, where it hangs to this day.