Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/92

82 It is resolved: henceforth an endless war, I and my muse with them, and theirs declare; Whom neither open malice of the foes, Nor private daggers, nor St. Omer's dose, Nor all that Godfrey Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, the magistrate who took the depositions of Tonge and Oates, and immediately afterwards disappeared. At the end of five days his body was found in a ditch near Primrose-hill, with his sword run through it, and a dark mark round his neck, as if he had been strangled. This mysterious murder was at once ascribed to the Roman Catholics, and the superstitions of the people were appealed to by an anagram, extracted with a somewhat unscrupulous ingenuity from the murdered man's name— 'I find murdered by rogues.' The impression made on the public mind by this incident was deepened by the disclosure that Godfrey had been unwilling to take Oates' deposition, and that he had no sooner done so than he expressed to his friends his apprehensions that he would be himself the first martyr. His body was exhibited in the public streets for two days to exasperate the multitude; and his funeral, at which seventy-two divines preceded the coffin, was one of those terrible spectacles which are so well calculated to inflame popular frenzy. Godfrey was descended from a good family, of some ancient standing in Kent. His father represented New Romney in Parliament. In his youth, Godfrey, after finisliing his education at Westminster School, travelled on the Continent, and afterwards became a member of Gray's Inn, but returned to the country before he completed his terms, and having obtained his younger son's portion, about 1000l., finally settled in London in partnership with Mr. Harrison, a near relative, at Dowgate, where they established a wood-wharf. At the end of a few years they dissolved partnership, and Godfrey removed to a house at the bottom of Hartshorn-lane, or Alley, close on the Thames, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Palace at Whitehall. About 1760 or 1761, the old houses in Hartshorn-lane were pulled down, and Northumberland-street, then considered 'a handsome felt, or monarchs fear, Shall from my vowed and sworn revenge deter.