The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies
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Title: The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies
Author: Andrew Lang
Release date: February 1, 2000 [eBook #2073]
Most recently updated: December 17, 2016
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2073
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VALET'S TRAGEDY, AND OTHER STUDIES ***
Produced by Les Bowler and David Widger
THE VALET’S TRAGEDY AND OTHER STUDIES
By Andrew Lang
TO THE MARQUIS D’EGUILLES ‘FOR THE LOVE OF THE MAID AND OF CHIVALRY’
CONTENTS
PREFACE
I. THE VALET’S TRAGEDY
II. THE VALET’S MASTER
III. THE MYSTERY OF SIR EDMUND BERRY GODFREY
IV. THE FALSE JEANNE D’ARC.
V. JUNIUS AND LORD LYTTELTON’S GHOST
VI. THE MYSTERY OF AMY ROBSART
VII. THE VOICES OF JEANNE D’ARC
VIII. THE MYSTERY OF JAMES DE LA CLOCHE
IX. THE TRUTH ABOUT ‘FISHER’S GHOST’
X. THE MYSTERY OF LORD BATEMAN
XI. THE QUEEN’S MARIE
XII. THE SHAKESPEARE-BACON IMBROGLIO
PREFACE
These studies in secret history follow no chronological order. The
affair of James de la Cloche only attracted the author’s attention after
most of the volume was in print. But any reader curious in the veiled
intrigues of the Restoration will probably find it convenient to peruse
‘The Mystery of James de la Cloche’ after the essay on ‘The Valet’s
Master,’ as the puzzling adventures of de la Cloche occurred in the
years (1668-1669), when the Valet was consigned to lifelong captivity,
and the Master was broken on the wheel. What would have been done to
‘Giacopo Stuardo’ had he been a subject of Louis XIV., ‘’tis better only
guessing.’ But his fate, whoever he may have been, lay in the hands
of Lord Ailesbury’s ‘good King,’ Charles II., and so he had a good
deliverance.
The author is well aware that whosoever discusses historical mysteries
pleases the public best by being quite sure, and offering a definite and
certain solution. Unluckily Science forbids, and conscience is on the
same side. We verily do not know how the false Pucelle arrived at her
success with the family of the true Maid; we do not know, or pretend to
know, who killed Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey; or how Amy Robsart came by
her death; or why the Valet was so important a prisoner. It is only
possible to restate the cases, and remove, if we may, the errors and
confusions which beset the problems. Such a tiny point as the year
of Amy Robsart’s marriage is stated variously by our historians. To
ascertain the truth gave the author half a day’s work, and, at last,
he would have voted for the wrong year, had he not been aided by the
superior acuteness of his friend, Mr. Hay Fleming. He feels morally
certain that, in trying to set historians right about Amy Robsart, he
must have committed some conspicuous blunders; these always attend such
enterprises of rectification.
With regard to Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, Mr. A. W. Crawley-Boevey points
out to me that in an unpublished letter of Mr. Alexander Herbert Phaire
in 1743-44 (Addit. MSS. British Museum 4291, fol. 150) Godfrey is spoken
of in connection with his friend Valentine Greatrakes, the ‘miraculous
Conformist,’ or ‘Irish Stroker,’ of the Restoration. ‘It is a pity,’ Mr.
Phaire remarks, ‘that Sir Edmund’s letters, to the number of 104, are
not in somebody’s hands that would oblige the world by publishing them.
They contain many remarkable things, and the best and truest secret
history in King Charles II.’s reign.’ Where are these letters now? Mr.
Phaire does not say to whom they were addressed, perhaps to Greatrakes,
who named his second son after Sir Edmund, or to Colonel Phaire, the
Regicide. This Mr. Phaire of 1744 was of Colonel Phaire’s family. It
does not seem quite certain whether Le Fevre, or Lee Phaire, was the
real name of the so-called Jesuit whom Bedloe accused of the murder of
Sir Edmund.
Of the studies here presented, ‘The Valet’s Master,’ ‘The Mystery of
Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey,’ ‘The False Jeanne d’Arc,’ ‘The Mystery of Amy
Robsart,’ and ‘The Mystery of James de la Cloche,’ are now published for
the first time. Part of ‘The Voices of Jeanne d’Arc,’ is from a paper by
the author in ‘The Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.’
‘The Valet’s Tragedy’ is mainly from an article in ‘The Monthly Review,’
revised, corrected, and augmented. ‘The Queen’s Marie’ is a recast of a
paper in ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’; ‘The Truth about “Fisher’s Ghost,”’ and
‘Junius and Lord Lyttelton’s Ghost’ are reprinted, with little change,
from the same periodical. ‘The Mystery of Lord Bateman’ is a recast of
an article in ‘The Cornhill Magazine.’ The earlier part of the essay on
Shakespeare and Bacon appeared in ‘The Quarterly Review.’ The author is
obliged to the courtesy of the proprietors and editors of these serials
for permission to use his essays again, with revision and additions.*
*Essays by the author on ‘The False Pucelle’ and on ‘Sir Edmund
Berry Godfrey’ have appeared in The Nineteenth Century (1895) and in The
Cornhill Magazine, but these are not the papers here presented.
The author is deeply indebted to the generous assistance of Father
Gerard and Father Pollen, S.J.; and, for making transcripts of
unpublished documents, to Miss E. M. Thompson and Miss Violet Simpson.
Since passing the volume for the press the author has received from
Mr. Austin West, at Rome, a summary of Armanni’s letter about Giacopo
Stuardo. He is led thereby to the conclusion that Giacopo was identical
with the eldest son of Charles II.--James de la Cloche--but conceives
that, at the end of his life, James was insane, or at least was a
‘megalomaniac,’ or was not author of his own Will.
I. THE VALET’S TRAGEDY
1. THE LEGEND OF THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK
The Mystery of the Man in the Iron Mask is, despite a pleasant saying
of Lord Beaconsfield’s, one of the most fascinating in history. By a
curious coincidence the wildest legend on the subject, and the correct
explanation of the problem, were offered to the world in the same year,
1801. According to this form of the legend, the Man in the Iron Mask was
the genuine Louis XIV., deprived of his rights in favour of a child of
Anne of Austria and of Mazarin. Immured in the Isles Sainte-Marguerite,
in the bay of Cannes (where you are shown his cell, looking north to
the sunny town), he married, and begot a son. That son was carried to
Corsica, was named de Buona Parte, and was the ancestor of Napoleon. The
Emperor was thus the legitimate representative of the House of Bourbon.
This legend was circulated in 1801, and is referred to in a proclamation
of the Royalists of La Vendee. In the same year, 1801, Roux Fazaillac,
a Citoyen and a revolutionary legislator, published a work in which he
asserted that the Man in the Iron Mask (as known in rumour) was not one
man, but a myth, in which the actual facts concerning at least two men
were blended. It is certain that Roux Fazaillac was right; or that, if
he was wrong, the Man in the Iron Mask was an obscure valet, of French
birth, residing in England, whose real name was Martin.
Before we enter on the topic of this poor menial’s tragic history,
it may be as well to trace the progress of the romantic legend, as it
blossomed after the death of the Man, whose Mask was not of iron, but
of black velvet. Later we shall show how the legend struck root and
flowered, from the moment when the poor valet, Martin (by his prison
pseudonym ‘Eustache Dauger’), was immured in the French fortress of
Pignerol, in Piedmont (August 1669).
The Man, IN CONNECTION WITH THE MASK, is first known to us from a kind
of notebook kept by du Junca, Lieutenant of the Bastille. On September
18, 1698, he records the arrival of the new Governor of the Bastille,
M. de Saint-Mars, bringing with him, from his last place, the Isles
Sainte-Marguerite, in the bay of Cannes, ‘an old prisoner whom he had at
Pignerol. He keeps the prisoner always masked, his name is not spoken...
and I have put him, alone, in the third chamber of the Bertaudiere
tower, having furnished it some days before with everything, by order
of M. de Saint-Mars. The prisoner is to be served and cared for by M. de
Rosarges,’ the officer next in command under Saint-Mars.*
*Funck-Brentano. Legendes et Archives de la Bastille, pp. 86, 87,
Paris, 1898, p. 277, a facsimile of this entry.
The prisoner’s death is entered by du Junca on November 19, 1703. To
that entry we return later.
The existence of this prisoner was known and excited curiosity. On
October 15, 1711, the Princess Palatine wrote about the case to
the Electress Sophia of Hanover, ‘A man lived for long years in the
Bastille, masked, and masked he died there. Two musketeers were by his
side to shoot him if ever he unmasked. He ate and slept in his mask.
There must, doubtless, have been some good reason for this, as otherwise
he was very well treated, well lodged, and had everything given to him
that he wanted. He took the Communion masked; was very devout, and read
perpetually.’
On October 22, 1711, the Princess writes that the Mask was an English
nobleman, mixed up in the plot of the Duke of Berwick against William
III.--Fenwick’s affair is meant. He was imprisoned and masked that the
Dutch usurper might never know what had become of him.*
* Op. cit. 98, note 1.
The legend was now afloat in society. The sub-commandant of the Bastille
from 1749 to 1787, Chevalier, declared, obviously on the evidence of
tradition, that all the Mask’s furniture and clothes were destroyed at
his death, lest they might yield a clue to his identity. Louis XV. is
said to have told Madame de Pompadour that the Mask was ‘the minister
of an Italian prince.’ Louis XVI. told Marie Antoinette (according to
Madame de Campan) that the Mask was a Mantuan intriguer, the same
person as Louis XV. indicated. Perhaps he was, it is one of two possible
alternatives. Voltaire, in the first edition of his ‘Siecle de Louis
XIV.,’ merely spoke of a young, handsome, masked prisoner, treated with
the highest respect by Louvois, the Minister of Louis XIV. At last, in
‘Questions sur l’Encyclopedie’ (second edition), Voltaire averred that
the Mask was the son of Anne of Austria and Mazarin, an elder brother of
Louis XIV. Changes were rung on this note: the Mask was the actual
King, Louis XIV. was a bastard. Others held that he was James, Duke of
Monmouth--or Moliere! In 1770 Heiss identified him with Mattioli, the
Mantuan intriguer, and especially after the appearance of the book by
Roux Fazaillac, in 1801, that was the generally accepted opinion.
It MAY be true, in part. Mattioli MAY have been the prisoner who died in
the Bastille in November 1703, but the legend of the Mask’s prison life
undeniably arose out of the adventure of our valet, Martin or Eustache
Dauger.
2. THE VALET’S HISTORY
After reading the arguments of the advocates of Mattioli, I could not
but perceive that, whatever captive died, masked, at the Bastille in
1703, the valet Dauger was the real source of most of the legends about
the Man in the Iron Mask. A study of M. Lair’s book ‘Nicholas Foucquet’
(1890) confirmed this opinion. I therefore pushed the inquiry into a
source neglected by the French historians, namely, the correspondence
of the English ambassadors, agents, and statesmen for the years 1668,
1669.* One result is to confirm a wild theory of my own to the effect
that the Man in the Iron Mask (if Dauger were he) may have been as great
a mystery to himself as to historical inquirers. He may not have
known WHAT he was imprisoned for doing! More important is the probable
conclusion that the long and mysterious captivity of Eustache Dauger,
and of another perfectly harmless valet and victim, was the mere
automatic result of the ‘red tape’ of the old French absolute monarchy.
These wretches were caught in the toils of the system, and suffered to
no purpose, for no crime. The two men, at least Dauger, were apparently
mere supernumeraries in the obscure intrigue of a conspirator known as
Roux de Marsilly.
*The papers are in the Record Office; for the contents see the
following essay, ‘The Valet’s Master.’
This truly abominable tragedy of Roux de Marsilly is ‘another story,’
narrated in the following essay. It must suffice here to say that, in
1669, while Charles II. was negotiating the famous, or infamous, secret
treaty with Louis XIV.--the treaty of alliance against Holland, and
in favour of the restoration of Roman Catholicism in England--Roux de
Marsilly, a French Huguenot, was dealing with Arlington and others, in
favour of a Protestant league against France.
When he started from England for Switzerland in February 1669, Marsilly
left in London a valet, called by him ‘Martin,’ who had quitted his
service and was living with his own family. This man is the ‘Eustache
Dauger’ of our mystery. The name is his prison pseudonym, as ‘Lestang’
was that of Mattioli. The French Government was anxious to lay hands on
him, for he had certainly, as the letters of Marsilly prove, come and
gone freely between that conspirator and his English employers. How much
Dauger knew, what amount of mischief he could effect, was uncertain.
Much or little, it was a matter which, strange to say, caused the
greatest anxiety to Louis XIV. and to his Ministers for very many years.
Probably long before Dauger died (the date is unknown, but it was more
than twenty-five years after Marsilly’s execution), his secret, if
secret he possessed, had ceased to be of importance. But he was now in
the toils of the French red tape, the system of secrecy which rarely
released its victim. He was guarded, we shall see, with such unheard-of
rigour, that popular fancy at once took him for some great, perhaps
royal, personage.
Marsilly was publicly tortured to death in Paris on June 22, 1669. By
July 19 his ex-valet, Dauger, had entered on his mysterious term of
captivity. How the French got possession of him, whether he yielded
to cajolery, or was betrayed by Charles II., is uncertain. The French
ambassador at St. James’s, Colbert (brother of the celebrated Minister),
writes thus to M. de Lyonne, in Paris, on July 1, 1669:* ‘Monsieur Joly
has spoken to the man Martin’ (Dauger), ‘and has really persuaded him
that, by going to France and telling all that he knows against Roux, he
will play the part of a lad of honour and a good subject.’
*Transcripts from Paris MSS. Vol. xxxiii., Record Office.
But Martin, after all, was NOT persuaded!
Martin replied to Joly that HE KNEW NOTHING AT ALL, and that, once in
France, people would think he was well acquainted with the traffickings
of Roux, ‘AND SO HE WOULD BE KEPT IN PRISON TO MAKE HIM DIVULGE WHAT HE
DID NOT KNOW.’ The possible Man in the Iron Mask did not know his own
secret! But, later in the conversation, Martin foolishly admitted that
he knew a great deal; perhaps he did this out of mere fatal vanity.
Cross to France, however, he would not, even when offered a safe-conduct
and promise of reward. Colbert therefore proposes to ask Charles to
surrender the valet, and probably Charles descended to the meanness.
By July 19, at all events, Louvois, the War Minister of Louis XIV.,
was bidding Saint-Mars, at Pignerol in Piedmont, expect from Dunkirk a
prisoner of the very highest importance--a valet! This valet, now called
‘Eustache Dauger,’ can only have been Marsilly’s valet, Martin, who, by
one means or another, had been brought from England to Dunkirk. It is
hardly conceivable, at least, that when a valet, in England, is ‘wanted’
by the French police on July 1, for political reasons, and when by July
19 they have caught a valet of extreme political importance, the two
valets should be two different men. Martin must be Dauger.
Here, then, by July 19, 1669, we find our unhappy serving-man in the
toils. Why was he to be handled with such mysterious rigour? It is
true that State prisoners of very little account were kept with great
secrecy. But it cannot well be argued that they were all treated with
the extraordinary precautions which, in the case of Dauger, were not
relaxed for twenty-five or thirty years. The King says, according to
Louvois, that the safe keeping of Dauger is ‘of the last importance to
his service.’ He must have intercourse with nobody. His windows must be
where nobody can pass; several bolted doors must cut him off from the
sound of human voices. Saint-Mars himself, the commandant, must feed the
valet daily. ‘YOU MUST NEVER, UNDER ANY PRETENCE, LISTEN TO WHAT HE MAY
WISH TO TELL YOU. YOU MUST THREATEN HIM WITH DEATH IF HE SPEAKS ONE WORD
EXCEPT ABOUT HIS ACTUAL NEEDS. He is only a valet, and does not need
much furniture.’*
*The letters are printed by Roux Fazaillac, Jung, Lair, and others.
Saint-Mars replied that, in presence of M. de Vauroy, the chief officer
of Dunkirk (who carried Dauger thence to Pignerol), he had threatened
to run Dauger through the body if he ever dared to speak, even to him,
Saint-Mars. He has mentioned this prisoner, he says, to no mortal.
People believe that Dauger is a Marshal of France, so strange and
unusual are the precautions taken for his security.
A Marshal of France! The legend has begun. At this time (1669)
Saint-Mars had in charge Fouquet, the great fallen Minister, the richest
and most dangerous subject of Louis XIV. By-and-by he also held Lauzun,
the adventurous wooer of la Grande Mademoiselle. But it was not they, it
was the valet, Dauger, who caused ‘sensation.’
On February 20,1672, Saint-Mars, for the sake of economy wished to use
Dauger as valet to Lauzun. This proves that Saint-Mars did not, after
all, see the necessity of secluding Dauger, or thought the King’s fears
groundless. In the opinion of Saint-Mars, Dauger did not want to be
released, ‘would never ask to be set free.’ Then why was he so anxiously
guarded? Louvois refused to let Dauger be put with Lauzun as valet. In
1675, however, he allowed Dauger to act as valet to Fouquet, but with
Lauzun, said Louvois, Dauger must have no intercourse. Fouquet had then
another prisoner valet, La Riviere. This man had apparently been accused
of no crime. He was of a melancholy character, and a dropsical habit of
body: Fouquet had amused himself by doctoring him and teaching him to
read.
In the month of December 1678, Saint-Mars, the commandant of the prison,
brought to Fouquet a sealed letter from Louvois, the seal unbroken.
His own reply was also to be sealed, and not to be seen by Saint-Mars.
Louvois wrote that the King wished to know one thing, before giving
Fouquet ampler liberty. Had his valet, Eustache Dauger, told his other
valet, La Riviere, what he had done before coming to Pignerol? (de ce
a quoi il a ete employe auparavant que d’etre a Pignerol). ‘His Majesty
bids me ask you [Fouquet] this question, and expects that you will
answer without considering anything but the truth, that he may know what
measures to take,’ these depending on whether Dauger has, or has not,
told La Riviere the story of his past life.* Moreover, Lauzun was never,
said Louvois, to be allowed to enter Fouquet’s room when Dauger was
present. The humorous point is that, thanks to a hole dug in the wall
between his room and Fouquet’s, Lauzun saw Dauger whenever he pleased.
*Lair, Nicholas Foucquet, ii. pp. 463, 464.
From the letter of Louvois to Fouquet, about Dauger (December 23, 1678),
it is plain that Louis XIV. had no more pressing anxiety, nine years
after Dauger’s arrest, than to conceal WHAT IT WAS THAT DAUGER HAD DONE.
It is apparent that Saint-Mars himself either was unacquainted with this
secret, or was supposed by Louvois and the King to be unaware of it. He
had been ordered never to allow Dauger to tell him: he was not allowed
to see the letters on the subject between Louvois and Fouquet. We still
do not know, and never shall know, whether Dauger himself knew his own
secret, or whether (as he had anticipated) he was locked up for not
divulging what he did not know.
The answer of Fouquet to Louvois must have satisfied Louis that Dauger
had not imparted his secret to the other valet, La Riviere, for Fouquet
was now allowed a great deal of liberty. In 1679, he might see his
family, the officers of the garrison, and Lauzun--it being provided that
Lauzun and Dauger should never meet. In March 1680, Fouquet died, and
henceforth the two valets were most rigorously guarded; Dauger, because
he was supposed to know something; La Riviere, because Dauger might have
imparted the real or fancied secret to him. We shall return to these
poor serving-men, but here it is necessary to state that, ten months
before the death of their master, Fouquet, an important new captive had
been brought to the prison of Pignerol.
This captive was the other candidate for the honours of the Mask, Count
Mattioli, the secretary of the Duke of Mantua. He was kidnapped on
Italian soil on May 2, 1679, and hurried to the mountain fortress of
Pignerol, then on French ground. His offence was the betraying of the
secret negotiations for the cession of the town and fortress of Casal,
by the Duke of Mantua, to Louis XIV. The disappearance of Mattioli was,
of course, known to the world. The cause of his enlevement, and the
place of his captivity, Pignerol, were matters of newspaper comment at
least as early as 1687. Still earlier, in 1682, the story of Mattioli’s
arrest and seclusion in Pignerol had been published in a work named ‘La
Prudenza Trionfante di Casale.’* There was thus no mystery, at the time,
about Mattioli; his crime and punishment were perfectly well known to
students of politics. He has been regarded as the mysterious Man in the
Iron Mask, but, for years after his arrest, he was the least mysterious
of State prisoners.
*Brentano, op. cit. p. 117.
Here, then, is Mattioli in Pignerol in May 1679. While Fouquet then
enjoyed relative freedom, while Lauzun schemed escapes or made insulting
love to Mademoiselle Fouquet, Mattioli lived on the bread and water of
affliction. He was threatened with torture to make him deliver up some
papers compromising to Louis XIV. It was expressly commanded that he
should have nothing beyond the barest necessaries of life. He was to
be kept dans la dure prison. In brief, he was used no better than the
meanest of prisoners. The awful life of isolation, without employment,
without books, without writing materials, without sight or sound of man
save when Saint-Mars or his lieutenant brought food for the day, drove
captives mad.
In January 1680 two prisoners, a monk* and one Dubreuil, had become
insane. By February 14, 1680, Mattioli was daily conversing with God and
his angels. ‘I believe his brain is turned,’ says Saint-Mars. In March
1680, as we saw, Fouquet died. The prisoners, not counting Lauzun
(released soon after), were now five: (1) Mattioli (mad); (2) Dubreuil
(mad); (3) The monk (mad); (4) Dauger, and (5) La Riviere. These two,
being employed as valets, kept their wits. On the death of Fouquet,
Louvois wrote to Saint-Mars about the two valets. Lauzun must be made
to believe that they had been set at liberty, but, in fact, they must be
most carefully guarded IN A SINGLE CHAMBER. They were shut up in one of
the dungeons of the ‘Tour d’en bas.’ Dauger had recently done something
as to which Louvois writes: ‘Let me know how Dauger can possibly have
done what you tell me, and how he got the necessary drugs, as I cannot
suppose that you supplied him with them’ (July 10, 1680).**
*A monk, who may have been this monk, appears in the following
essay.
**Lair, Nicholas Foucquet, ii. pp. 476, 477.
Here, then, by July 1680, are the two valets locked in one dungeon of
the ‘Tour d’en bas.’ By September Saint-Mars had placed Mattioli, with
the mad monk, in another chamber of the same tower. He writes: ‘Mattioli
is almost as mad as the monk,’ who arose from bed and preached naked.
Mattioli behaved so rudely and violently that the lieutenant of
Saint-Mars had to show him a whip, and threaten him with a flogging.
This had its effect. Mattioli, to make his peace, offered a valuable
ring to Blainvilliers. The ring was kept to be restored to him, if ever
Louis let him go free--a contingency mentioned more than once in the
correspondence.
Apparently Mattioli now sobered down, and probably was given a separate
chamber and a valet; he certainly had a valet at Pignerol later. By May
1681 Dauger and La Riviere still occupied their common chamber in the
‘Tour d’en bas.’ They were regarded by Louvois as the most important
of the five prisoners then at Pignerol. They, not Mattioli, were the
captives about whose safe and secret keeping Louis and Louvois were most
anxious. This appears from a letter of Louvois to Saint-Mars, of May 12,
1681. The gaoler, Saint-Mars, is to be promoted from Pignerol to Exiles.
‘Thither,’ says Louvois, ‘the king desires to transport SUCH OF YOUR
PRISONERS AS HE THINKS TOO IMPORTANT TO HAVE IN OTHER HANDS THAN YOURS.’
These prisoners are ‘THE TWO IN THE LOW CHAMBER OF THE TOWER,’ the two
valets, Dauger and La Riviere.
From a letter of Saint-Mars (June 1681) we know that Mattioli was not
one of these. He says: ‘I shall keep at Exiles two birds (merles) whom
I have here: they are only known as THE GENTRY OF THE LOW ROOM IN THE
TOWER; MATTIOLI MAY STAY ON HERE AT PIGNEROL WITH THE OTHER PRISONERS’
(Dubreuil and the mad monk). It is at this point that Le Citoyen Roux
(Fazaillac), writing in the Year IX. of the Republic (1801), loses
touch with the secret.* Roux finds, in the State Papers, the arrival
of Eustache Dauger at Pignerol in 1669, but does not know who he is,
or what is his quality. He sees that the Mask must be either Mattioli,
Dauger, the monk, one Dubreuil, or one Calazio. But, overlooking or not
having access to the letter of Saint-Mars of June 1681, Roux holds that
the prisoners taken to Les Exiles were the monk and Mattioli. One
of these must be the Mask, and Roux votes for Mattioli. He is wrong.
Mattioli beyond all doubt remained at Pignerol.
*Recherches Historiques, sur l’Homme au Masque de Fer, Paris. An
IX.
Mountains of argument have been built on these words, deux merles, ‘two
gaol-birds.’ One of the two, we shall see, became the source of the
legend of the Man in the Iron Mask. ‘How can a wretched gaol-bird
(merle) have been the Mask?’ asks M. Topin. ‘The rogue’s whole furniture
and table-linen were sold for 1 pound 19 shillings. He only got a new
suit of clothes every three years.’ All very true; but this gaol-bird
and his mate, by the direct statement of Louvois, are ‘the prisoners
too important to be entrusted to other hands than yours’--the hands
of Saint-Mars--while Mattioli is so unimportant that he may be left at
Pignerol under Villebois.
The truth is, that the offence and the punishment of Mattioli were well
known to European diplomatists and readers of books. Casal, moreover,
at this time was openly ceded to Louis XIV., and Mattioli could not
have told the world more than it already knew. But, for some inscrutable
reason, the secret which Dauger knew, or was suspected of knowing,
became more and more a source of anxiety to Louvois and Louis. What can
he have known? The charges against his master, Roux de Marsilly, had
been publicly proclaimed. Twelve years had passed since the dealings of
Arlington with Marsilly. Yet, Louvois became more and more nervous.
In accordance with commands of his, on March 2, 1682, the two valets,
who had hitherto occupied one chamber at Exiles as at Pignerol, were
cut off from all communication with each other. Says Saint-Mars, ‘Since
receiving your letter I have warded the pair as strictly and exactly
as I did M. Fouquet and M. Lauzun, who cannot brag that he sent out
or received any intelligence. Night and day two sentinels watch their
tower; and my own windows command a view of the sentinels. Nobody speaks
to my captives but myself, my lieutenant, their confessor, and the
doctor, who lives eighteen miles away, and only sees them when I am
present.’ Years went by; on January 1687 one of the two captives died;
we really do not know which with absolute certainty. However, the
intensified secrecy with which the survivor was now guarded seems more
appropriate to Dauger; and M. Funck-Brentano and M. Lair have no doubt
that it was La Riviere who expired. He was dropsical, that appears in
the official correspondence, and the dead prisoner died of dropsy.
As for the strange secrecy about Dauger, here is an example.
Saint-Mars, in January 1687, was appointed to the fortress of the Isles
Sainte-Marguerite, that sun themselves in the bay of Cannes. On January
20 he asks leave to go to see his little kingdom. He must leave Dauger,
but HAS FORBIDDEN EVEN HIS LIEUTENANT TO SPEAK TO THAT PRISONER. This
was an increase of precaution since 1682. He wishes to take the captive
to the Isles, but how? A sedan chair covered over with oilcloth seems
best. A litter might break down, litters often did, and some one might
then see the passenger.
Now M. Funck-Brentano says, to minimise the importance of Dauger, ‘he
was shut up like so much luggage in a chair hermetically closed with
oilcloth, carried by eight Piedmontese in relays of four.’
Luggage is not usually carried in hermetically sealed sedan chairs, but
Saint-Mars has explained why, by surplus of precaution, he did not use
a litter. The litter might break down and Dauger might be seen. A new
prison was built specially, at the cost of 5,000 livres, for Dauger at
Sainte-Marguerite, with large sunny rooms. On May 3, 1687, Saint-Mars
had entered on his island realm, Dauger being nearly killed by twelve
days’ journey in a closed chair. He again excited the utmost curiosity.
On January 8, 1688, Saint-Mars writes that his prisoner is believed
by the world to be either a son of Oliver Cromwell, or the Duc de
Beaufort,* who was never seen again, dead or alive, after a night battle
in Crete, on June 25, 1669, just before Dauger was arrested. Saint-Mars
sent in a note of the TOTAL of Dauger’s expenses for the year 1687. He
actually did not dare to send the ITEMS, he says, lest they, if the bill
fell into the wrong hands, might reveal too much!
*The Duc de Beaufort whom Athos releases from prison in Dumas’s
Vingt Ans Apres.
Meanwhile, an Italian news-letter, copied into a Leyden paper, of August
1687, declared that Mattioli had just been brought from Pignerol to
Sainte-Marguerite. There was no mystery about Mattioli, the story of
his capture was published in 1682, but the press, on one point, was
in error: Mattioli was still at Pignerol. The known advent of the late
Commandant of Pignerol, Saint-Mars, with a single concealed prisoner, at
the island, naturally suggested the erroneous idea that the prisoner
was Mattioli. The prisoner was really Dauger, the survivor of the two
valets.
From 1688 to 1691 no letter about Dauger has been published. Apparently
he was then the only prisoner on the island, except one Chezut, who was
there before Dauger arrived, and gave up his chamber to Dauger while
the new cells were being built. Between 1689 and 1693 six Protestant
preachers were brought to the island, while Louvois, the Minister, died
in 1691, and was succeeded by Barbezieux. On August 13, 1691, Barbezieux
wrote to ask Saint-Mars about ‘the prisoner whom he had guarded for
twenty years.’ The only such prisoner was Dauger, who entered Pignerol
in August 1669. Mattioli had been a prisoner only for twelve years, and
lay in Pignerol, not in Sainte-Marguerite, where Saint-Mars now was.
Saint-Mars replied: ‘I can assure you that nobody has seen him but
myself.’
By the beginning of March 1694, Pignerol had been bombarded by the
enemies of France; presently Louis XIV. had to cede it to Savoy. The
prisoners there must be removed. Mattioli, in Pignerol, at the end of
1693, had been in trouble. He and his valet had tried to smuggle out
letters written on the linings of their pockets. These were seized and
burned. On March 20, 1694, Barbezieux wrote to Laprade, now commanding
at Pignerol, that he must take his three prisoners, one by one, with all
secrecy, to Sainte-Marguerite. Laprade alone must give them their food
on the journey. The military officer of the escort was warned to ask
no questions. Already (February 26, 1694) Barbezieux had informed
Saint-Mars that these prisoners were coming. ‘They are of more
consequence, one of them at least, than the prisoners on the island, and
must be put in the safest places.’ The ‘one’ is doubtless Mattioli.
In 1681 Louvois had thought Dauger and La Riviere more important than
Mattioli, who, in March 1694, came from Pignerol to Sainte-Marguerite.
Now in April 1694 a prisoner died at the island, a prisoner who, like
Mattioli, HAD A VALET. We hear of no other prisoner on the island,
except Mattioli, who had a valet. A letter of Saint-Mars (January
6, 1696) proves that no prisoner THEN had a valet, for each prisoner
collected his own dirty plates and dishes, piled them up, and handed
them to the lieutenant.
M. Funck-Brentano argues that in this very letter (January 6, 1696)
Saint-Mars speaks of ‘les valets de messieurs les prisonniers.’ But in
that part of the letter Saint-Mars is not speaking of the actual state
of things at Sainte-Marguerite, but is giving reminiscences of Fouquet
and Lauzun, who, of course, at Pignerol, had valets, and had money, as
he shows. Dauger had no money. M. Funck-Brentano next argues that early
in 1694 one of the preacher prisoners, Melzac, died, and cites M. Jung
[‘La Verite sur le Masque de Fer,’ p. 91). This is odd, as M. Jung says
that Melzac, or Malzac, ‘DIED IN THE END OF 1692, OR EARLY IN 1693.’
Why, then, does M. Funck-Brentano cite M. Jung for the death of the
preacher early in 1694, when M. Jung (conjecturally) dates his decease
at least a year earlier?* It is not a mere conjecture, as, on March 3,
1693, Barbezieux begs Saint-Mars to mention his Protestant prisoners
under nicknames. There are three, and Malzac is no longer one of them.
Malzac, in 1692, suffered from a horrible disease, discreditable to one
of the godly, and in October 1692 had been allowed medical expenses.
Whether they included a valet or not, Malzac seems to have been
non-existent by March 1693. Had he possessed a valet, and had he died
in 1694, why should HIS valet have been ‘shut up in the vaulted prison’?
This was the fate of the valet of the prisoner who died in April 1694,
and was probably Mattioli.
*M. Funck-Brentano’s statement is in Revue Historique, lvi. p. 298.
‘Malzac died at the beginning of 1694,’ citing Jung, p. 91. Now on P. 91
M. Jung writes, ‘At the beginning of 1694 Saint-Mars had six prisoners,
of whom one, Melzac, dies.’ But M. Jung (pp. 269, 270) later writes, ‘It
is probable that Melzac died at the end of 1692, or early in 1693,’ and
he gives his reasons, which are convincing. M. Funck-Brentano must have
overlooked M. Jung’s change of opinion between his P. 91 and his pp.
269, 270.
Mattioli, certainly, had a valet in December 1693 at Pignerol. He went
to Sainte-Marguerite in March 1694. In April 1694 a prisoner with
a valet died at Sainte-Marguerite. In January 1696 no prisoner at
Sainte-Marguerite had a valet. Therefore, there is a strong presumption
that the ‘prisonnier au valet’ who died in April 1694 was Mattioli.
After December 1693, when he was still at Pignerol, the name of
Mattioli, freely used before, never occurs in the correspondence. But we
still often hear of ‘l’ancien prisonnier,’ ‘the old prisoner.’ He
was, on the face of it, Dauger, by far the oldest prisoner. In 1688,
Saint-Mars, having only one prisoner (Dauger), calls him merely ‘my
prisoner.’ In 1691, when Saint-Mars had several prisoners, Barbezieux
styles Dauger ‘your prisoner of twenty years’ standing.’ When, in
1696-1698, Saint-Mars mentions ‘mon ancien prisonnier,’ ‘my prisoner of
long standing,’ he obviously means Dauger, not Mattioli--above all,
if Mattioli died in 1694. M. Funck-Brentano argues that ‘mon ancien
prisonnier’ can only mean ‘my erstwhile prisoner, he who was lost and is
restored to me’--that is, Mattioli. This is not the view of M. Jung, or
M. Lair, or M. Loiseleur.
Friends of Mattioli’s claims rest much on this letter of Barbezieux
to Saint-Mars (November 17, 1697): ‘You have only to watch over the
security of all your prisoners, WITHOUT EVER EXPLAINING TO ANY ONE
WHAT IT IS THAT YOUR PRISONER OF LONG STANDING DID.’ That secret, it is
argued, MUST apply to Mattioli. But all the world knew what Mattioli had
done! Nobody knew, and nobody knows, what Eustache Dauger had done.
It was one of the arcana imperii. It is the secret enforced ever since
Dauger’s arrest in 1669. Saint-Mars (1669) was not to ask. Louis XIV.
could only lighten the captivity of Fouquet (1678) if his valet, La
Riviere, did not know what Dauger had done. La Riviere (apparently a
harmless man) lived and died in confinement, the sole reason being that
he might perhaps know what Dauger had done. Consequently there is the
strongest presumption that the ‘ancien prisonnier’ of 1697 is Dauger,
and that ‘what he had done’ (which Saint-Mars must tell to no one) was
what Dauger did, not what Mattioli did. All Europe knew what Mattioli
had done; his whole story had been published to the world in 1682 and
1687.
On July 19, 1698, Barbezieux bade Saint-Mars come to assume the command
of the Bastille. He is to bring his ‘old prisoner,’ whom not a soul is
to see. Saint-Mars therefore brought his man MASKED, exactly as another
prisoner was carried masked from Provence to the Bastille in 1695. M.
Funck-Brentano argues that Saint-Mars was now quite fond of his old
Mattioli, so noble, so learned.
At last, on September 18, 1698, Saint-Mars lodged his ‘old prisoner’
in the Bastille, ‘an old prisoner whom he had at Pignerol,’ says the
journal of du Junca, Lieutenant of the Bastille. His food, we saw, was
brought him by Rosarges alone, the ‘Major,’ a gentleman who had always
been with Saint-Mars. Argues M. Funck-Brentano, all this proves that the
captive was a gentleman, not a valet. Why? First, because the Bastille,
under Louis XIV., was ‘une prison de distinction.’ Yet M. Funck-Brentano
tells us that in Mazarin’s time ‘valets mixed up with royal plots’ were
kept in the Bastille. Again, in 1701, in this ‘noble prison,’ the Mask
was turned out of his room to make place for a female fortune-teller,
and was obliged to chum with a profligate valet of nineteen, and a
‘beggarly’ bad patriot, who ‘blamed the conduct of France, and approved
that of other nations, especially the Dutch.’ M. Funck-Brentano himself
publishes these facts (1898), in part published earlier (1890) by M.
Lair.* Not much noblesse here! Next, if Rosarges, a gentleman, served
the Mask, Saint-Mars alone (1669) carried his food to the valet, Dauger.
So the service of Rosarges does not ennoble the Mask and differentiate
him from Dauger, who was even more nobly served, by Saint-Mars.
*Legendes de la Bastille, pp. 86-89. Citing du Junca’s Journal,
April 30, 1701.
On November 19, 1703, the Mask died suddenly (still in his velvet mask),
and was buried on the 20th. The parish register of the church names him
‘Marchialy’ or ‘Marchioly,’ one may read it either way; du Junca, the
Lieutenant of the Bastille, in his contemporary journal, calls him ‘Mr.
de Marchiel.’ Now, Saint-Mars often spells Mattioli, ‘Marthioly.’
This is the one strength of the argument for Mattioli’s claims to the
Mask. M. Lair replies, ‘Saint-Mars had a mania for burying prisoners
under fancy names,’ and gives examples. One is only a gardener, Francois
Eliard (1701), concerning whom it is expressly said that, as he is a
State prisoner, his real name is not to be given, so he is registered as
Pierre Maret (others read Navet, ‘Peter Turnip’). If Saint-Mars, looking
about for a false name for Dauger’s burial register, hit on Marsilly
(the name of Dauger’s old master), that MIGHT be miswritten Marchialy.
However it be, the age of the Mask is certainly falsified; the
register gives ‘about forty-five years old.’ Mattioli would have been
sixty-three; Dauger cannot have been under fifty-three.
There the case stands. If Mattioli died in April 1694, he cannot be the
Man in the Iron Mask. Of Dauger’s death we find no record, unless he
was the Man in the Iron Mask, and died, in 1703, in the Bastille. He was
certainly, in 1669 and 1688, at Pignerol and at Sainte-Marguerite, the
centre of the mystery about some great prisoner, a Marshal of France,
the Duc de Beaufort, or a son of Oliver Cromwell. Mattioli was no
mystery, no secret. Dauger is so mysterious that probably the secret of
his mystery was unknown to himself. By 1701, when obscure wretches were
shut up with the Mask, the secret, whatever its nature, had ceased to
be of moment. The captive was now the mere victim of cruel routine.
But twenty years earlier, Saint-Mars had said that Dauger ‘takes things
easily, resigned to the will of God and the King.’
To sum up, on July 1, 1669, the valet of the Huguenot intriguer, Roux
de Marsilly, the valet resident in England, known to his master as
‘Martin,’ was ‘wanted’ by the French secret police. By July 19, a valet,
of the highest political importance, had been brought to Dunkirk, from
England, no doubt. My hypothesis assumes that this valet, though now
styled ‘Eustache Dauger,’ was the ‘Martin’ of Roux de Marsilly. He was
kept with so much mystery at Pignerol that already the legend began its
course; the captive valet was said to be a Marshal of France! We then
follow Dauger from Pignerol to Les Exiles, till January 1687, when one
valet out of a pair, Dauger being one of them, dies. We presume that
Dauger is the survivor, because the great mystery still is ‘what he
HAS DONE,’ whereas the other valet had done nothing, but may have known
Dauger’s secret. Again, the other valet had long been dropsical, and the
valet who died in 1687 died of dropsy.
In 1688, Dauger, at Sainte-Marguerite, is again the source and centre
of myths; he is taken for a son of Oliver Cromwell, or for the Duc
de Beaufort. In June 1692, one of the Huguenot preachers at
Sainte-Marguerite writes on his shirt and pewter plate, and throws them
out of window.* Legend attributes these acts to the Man in the Iron
Mask, and transmutes a pewter into a silver plate. Now, in 1689-1693,
Mattioli was at Pignerol, but Dauger was at Sainte-Marguerite, and the
Huguenot’s act is attributed to him. Thus Dauger, not Mattioli, is the
centre round which the myths crystallise: the legends concern HIM,
not Mattioli, whose case is well known, and gives rise to no legend.
Finally, we have shown that Mattioli probably died at Sainte-Marguerite
in April 1694. If so, then nobody but Dauger can be the ‘old prisoner’
whom Saint-Mars brought, masked, to the Bastille, in September 1698, and
who died there in November 1703. However, suppose that Mattioli did not
die in 1694, but was the masked man who died in the Bastille in 1703,
then the legend of Dauger came to be attributed to Mattioli: these two
men’s fortunes are combined in the one myth.
*Saint-Mars au Ministre, June 4, 1692.
The central problem remains unsolved,
WHAT HAD THE VALET, EUSTACHE DAUGER, DONE?*
*One marvels that nobody has recognised, in the mask, James Stuart
(James de la Cloche), eldest of the children of Charles II. He came to
England in 1668, was sent to Rome, and ‘disappears from history.’ See
‘The Mystery of James de la Cloche.’
II. THE VALET’S MASTER
The secret of the Man in the Iron Mask, or at least of one of the two
persons who have claims to be the Mask, was ‘WHAT HAD EUSTACHE DAUGER
DONE?’ To guard this secret the most extraordinary precautions were
taken, as we have shown in the fore-going essay. And yet, if secret
there was, it might have got wind in the simplest fashion. In the
‘Vicomte de Bragelonne,’ Dumas describes the tryst of the Secret-hunters
with the dying Chief of the Jesuits at the inn in Fontainebleau. They
come from many quarters, there is a Baron of Germany and a laird from
Scotland, but Aramis takes the prize. He knows the secret of the Mask,
the most valuable of all to the intriguers of the Company of Jesus.
Now, despite all the precautions of Louvois and Saint-Mars, despite
sentinels for ever posted under Dauger’s windows, despite arrangements
which made it impossible for him to signal to people on the hillside at
Les Exiles, despite the suppression even of the items in the accounts of
his expenses, his secret, if he knew it, could have been discovered, as
we have remarked, by the very man most apt to make mischievous use of
it--by Lauzun. That brilliant and reckless adventurer could see Dauger,
in prison at Pignerol, when he pleased, for he had secretly excavated
a way into the rooms of his fellow-prisoner, Fouquet, on whom Dauger
attended as valet. Lauzun was released soon after Fouquet’s death. It is
unlikely that he bought his liberty by the knowledge of the secret, and
there is nothing to suggest that he used it (if he possessed it) in any
other way.
The natural clue to the supposed secret of Dauger is a study of the
career of his master, Roux de Marsilly. As official histories say next
to nothing about him, we may set forth what can be gleaned from the
State Papers in our Record Office. The earliest is a letter of Roux de
Marsilly to Mr. Joseph Williamson, secretary of Lord Arlington (December
1668). Marsilly sends Martin (on our theory Eustache Dauger) to bring
back from Williamson two letters from his own correspondent in Paris. He
also requests Williamson to procure for him from Arlington a letter of
protection, as he is threatened with arrest for some debt in which he
is not really concerned. Martin will explain. The next paper is endorsed
‘Received December 28, 1668, Mons. de Marsilly.’ As it is dated December
27, Marsilly must have been in England. The contents of this piece
deserve attention, because they show the terms on which Marsilly and
Arlington were, or, at least, how Marsilly conceived them.
(1) Marsilly reports, on the authority of his friends at Stockholm, that
the King of Sweden intends, first to intercede with Louis XIV. in favour
of the French Huguenots, and next, if diplomacy fails, to join in arms
with the other Protestant Powers of Europe.
(2) His correspondent in Holland learns that if the King of England
invites the States to any ‘holy resolution,’ they will heartily lend
forces. No leader so good as the English King--Charles II! Marsilly had
shown ARLINGTON’S LETTER to a Dutch friend, who bade him approach
the Dutch ambassador in England. He has dined with that diplomatist.
Arlington had, then, gone so far as to write an encouraging letter. The
Dutch ambassador had just told Marsilly that he had received the same
news, namely, that, Holland would aid the Huguenots, persecuted by Louis
XIV.
(3) Letters from Provence, Languedoc, and Dauphine say that the
situation there is unaltered.
(4) The Canton of Zurich write that they will keep their promises and
that Berne IS ANXIOUS TO PLEASE THE KING OF GREAT BRITAIN, and that
it is ready to raise, with Zurich, 15,000 men. They are not afraid of
France.
(5) Zurich fears that, if Charles is not represented at the next Diet,
Bale and Saint Gal will be intimidated, and not dare to join the Triple
Alliance of Spain, Holland, and England. The best plan will be
for Marsilly to represent England at the Diet of January 25, 1669,
accompanied by the Swiss General Balthazar. This will encourage friends
‘TO GIVE HIS BRITTANIC MAJESTY THE SATISFACTION WHICH HE DESIRES, and
will produce a close union between Holland, Sweden, the Cantons, and
other Protestant States.’
This reads as if Charles had already expressed some ‘desire.’
(6) Geneva grumbles at a reply of Charles ‘through a bishop who is their
enemy,’ the Bishop of London, ‘a persecutor of our religion,’ that is,
of Presbyterianism. However, nothing will dismay the Genevans, ‘si S. M.
B. ne change.’
Then comes a blank in the paper. There follows a copy of a letter as
if FROM CHARLES II. HIMSELF, to ‘the Right High and Noble Seigneurs of
Zurich.’ He has heard of their wishes from Roux de Marsilly, whom he
commissions to wait upon them. ‘I would not have written by my Bishop of
London had I been better informed, but would myself have replied to
your obliging letter, and would have assured you, as I do now, that I
desire....’
It appears as if this were a draft of the kind of letter which Marsilly
wanted Charles to write to Zurich, and there is a similar draft of a
letter for Arlington to follow, if he and Charles wish to send Marsilly
to the Swiss Diet. The Dutch ambassador, with whom Marsilly dined on
December 26, the Constable of Castille, and other grandees, are all of
opinion that he should visit the Protestant Swiss, as from the King of
England. The scheme is for an alliance of England, Holland, Spain, and
the Protestant Cantons, against France and Savoy.
Another letter of Marsilly to Arlington, only dated Jeudi, avers that he
can never repay Arlington for his extreme kindness and liberality. ‘No
man in England is more devoted to you than I am, and shall be all my
life.’*
*State Papers, France, vol. 125, 106.
On the very day when Marsilly drafted for Charles his own commission
to treat with Zurich for a Protestant alliance against France, Charles
himself wrote to his sister, Madame (Henriette d’Orleans). He spoke of
his secret treaty with France. ‘You know how much secrecy is necessary
for the carrying on of the business, and I assure you that nobody does,
nor shall, know anything of it here, but myself and that one person
more, till it be fit to be public.’* (Is ‘that one person’ de la
Cloche?)
*Madame, by Julia Cartwright, p. 275.
Thus Marsilly thought Charles almost engaged for the Protestant League,
while Charles was secretly allying himself with France against Holland.
Arlington was probably no less deceived by Charles than Marsilly was.
The Bishop of London’s share in the dealing with Zurich is obscure.
It appears certain that Arlington was not consciously deceiving
Marsilly. Madame wrote, on February 12, as to Arlington, ‘The man’s
attachment to the Dutch and his inclination towards Spain are too well
known.’* Not till April 25, 1669, does Charles tell his sister that
Arlington has an inkling of his secret dealings with France; how he
knows, Charles cannot tell.** It is impossible for us to ascertain how
far Charles himself deluded Marsilly, who went to the Continent early in
spring, 1669. Before May 15/25 1669, in fact on April 14, Marsilly had
been kidnapped by agents of Louis XIV., and his doom was dight.
*Madame, by Julia Cartwright, p. 281.
**Ibid. p. 285.
Here is the account of the matter, written to ------ by Perwich in
Paris:
W Perwich to ------
Paris, May 25, ‘69.
Honored Sir,
. . . . . .
The Cantons of Switzerland are much troubled at the French King’s having
sent 15 horsemen into Switzerland from whence the Sr de Maille,
the King’s resident there, had given information of the Sr Roux de
Marsilly’s being there negociating the bringing the Cantons into the
Triple League by discourses much to the disadvantage of France, giving
them very ill impressions of the French King’s Government, who was
BETRAYED BY A MONK THAT KEPT HIM COMPANY and intercepted by the said
horsemen brought into France and is expected at the Bastille. I believe
you know the man.... I remember him in England.
Can this monk be the monk who went mad in prison at Pignerol, sharing
the cell of Mattioli? Did he, too, suffer for his connection with
the secret? We do not know, but the position of Charles was awkward.
Marsilly, dealing with the Swiss, had come straight from England, where
he was lie with Charles’s minister, Arlington, and with the Dutch and
Spanish ambassadors. The King refers to the matter in a letter to his
sister of May 24, 1669 (misdated by Miss Cartwright, May 24, 1668.)*
‘You have, I hope, received full satisfaction by the last post in the
matter of Marsillac [Marsilly], for my Ld. Arlington has sent to Mr.
Montague [English ambassador at Paris] his history all the time he was
here, by which you will see how little credit he had here, and that
particularly my Lord Arlington was not in his good graces, because he
did not receive that satisfaction, in his negotiation, he expected, and
that was only in relation to the Swissers, and so I think I have said
enough of this matter.’
*Madame, by Julia Cartwright, p. 264.
Charles took it easily!
On May 15-25 Montague acknowledged Arlington’s letter to which Charles
refers; he has been approached, as to Marsilly, by the Spanish resident,
‘but I could not tell how to do anything in the business, never having
heard of the man, or that he was employed by my Master [Charles] in any
business. I have sent you also a copy of a letter which an Englishman
writ to me that I do not know, in behalf of Roux de Marsilly, but that
does not come by the post,’ being too secret.*
*State Papers, France, vol. 126.
France had been well informed about Marsilly while he was in England.
He then had a secretary, two lackeys, and a valet de chambre, and was
frequently in conference with Arlington and the Spanish ambassador to
the English Court. Colbert, the French ambassador in London, had written
all this to the French Government, on April 25, before he heard of
Marsilly’s arrest.*
*Bibl. Nat., Fonds Francais, No. 10665.
The belief that Marsilly was an agent of Charles appears to have been
general, and, if accepted by Louis XIV., would interfere with Charles’s
private negotiations for the Secret Treaty with France. On May 18 Prince
d’Aremberg had written on the subject to the Spanish ambassador in
Paris. Marsilly, he says, was arrested in Switzerland, on his way to
Berne, with a monk who was also seized, and, a curious fact, Marsilly’s
valet was killed in the struggle. This valet, of course, was not Dauger,
whom Marsilly had left in England. Marsilly ‘doit avoir demande la
protection du Roy de la Grande Bretagne en faveur des Religionaires
(Huguenots) de France, et passer en Suisse AVEC QUELQUE COMMISSION DE SA
PART.’ D’Aremberg begs the Spanish ambassador to communicate all this to
Montague, the English ambassador at Paris, but Montague probably, like
Perwich, knew nothing of the business any more than he knew of Charles’s
secret dealings with Louis through Madame.*
*State Papers, France, vol. 126.
To d’Aremberg’s letter is pinned an unsigned English note, obviously
intended for Arlington’s reading.
‘Roux de Marsilly is still in the Bastille though they have a mind to
hang him, yet they are much puzzled what to do with him. De Lionne has
beene to examine him twice or thrice, but there is noe witnes to prove
anything against him. I was told by one that the French king told it
to, that in his papers they find great mention of the DUKE OF BUCKS: AND
YOUR NAME, and speak as if he were much trusted by you. I have enquired
what this Marsilly is, and I find by one Mr. Marsilly that I am
acquainted withall, and a man of quality, that this man’s name is onely
Roux, and borne at Nismes and having been formerly a soldier in his
troope, ever since has taken his name to gain more credit in Switserland
where hee, Marsilly, formerly used to bee employed by his Coll: the
Mareschall de Schomberg who invaded Switserland.’
We next find a very curious letter, from which it appears that the
French Government inclined to regard Marsilly as, in fact, an agent
of Charles, but thought it wiser to trump up against him a charge of
conspiring against the life of Louis XIV. On this charge, or another,
he was executed, while the suspicion that he was an agent of English
treachery may have been the real cause of the determination to destroy
him. The Balthazar with whom Marsilly left his papers is mentioned with
praise by him in his paper for Arlington, of December 27, 1668. He is
the General who should have accompanied Marsilly to the Diet.
The substance of the letter (given in full in Note I.) is to the
following effect. P. du Moulin (Paris, May 19-29, 1669) writes to
Arlington. Ever since Ruvigny, the late French ambassador, a Protestant,
was in England, the French Government had been anxious to kidnap Roux
de Marsilly. They hunted him in England, Holland, Flanders, and
Franche-Comte. As we know from the case of Mattioli, the Government of
Louis XIV. was unscrupulously daring in breaking the laws of nations,
and seizing hostile personages in foreign territory, as Napoleon did
in the affair of the Duc d’Enghien. When all failed, Louis bade Turenne
capture Roux de Marsilly wherever he could find him. Turenne sent
officers and gentlemen abroad, and, after four months’ search, they
found Marsilly in Switzerland. They took him as he came out of the house
of his friend, General Balthazar, and carried him to Gex. No papers were
found on him, but he asked his captors to send to Balthazar and get ‘the
commission he had from England,’ which he probably thought would give
him the security of an official diplomatic position. Having got this
document, Marsilly’s captors took it to the French Ministers.
Nothing could be more embarrassing, if this were true, to Charles’s
representative in France, Montague, and to Charles’s secret
negotiations, also to Arlington, who had dealt with Marsilly. On his
part, the captive Marsilly constantly affirmed that he was the envoy
of the King of England. The common talk of Paris was that an agent
of Charles was in the Bastille, ‘though at Court they pretend to know
nothing of it.’ Louis was overjoyed at Marsilly’s capture, giving out
that he was conspiring against his life. Monsieur told Montague that he
need not beg for the life of a would-be murderer like Marsilly. But as
to this idea, ‘they begin now to mince it at Court,’ and Ruvigny assured
du Moulin ‘that they had no such thoughts.’ De Lyonne had seen Marsilly
and observed that it was a blunder to seize him. The French Government
was nervous, and Turenne’s secretary had been ‘pumping’ several
ambassadors as to what they thought of Marsilly’s capture on foreign
territory. One ambassador replied with spirit that a crusade by
all Europe against France, as of old against the Moslems, would be
necessary. Would Charles, du Moulin asked, own or disown Marsilly?
Montague’s position was now awkward. On May 23, his account of the case
was read, at Whitehall, to the Foreign Committee in London. (See Note
II. for the document.) He did not dare to interfere in Marsilly’s
behalf, because he did not know whether the man was an agent of Charles
or not. Such are the inconveniences of a secret royal diplomacy carried
on behind the backs of Ministers. Louis XV. later pursued this method
with awkward consequences.* The French Court, Montague said, was
overjoyed at the capture of Marsilly, and a reward of 100,000 crowns, ‘I
am told very privately, is set upon his head.’ The French ambassador in
England, Colbert, had reported that Charles had sent Marsilly ‘to draw
the Swisses into the Triple League’ against France. Montague had
tried to reassure Monsieur (Charles’s brother-in-law), but was himself
entirely perplexed. As Monsieur’s wife, Charles’s sister, was working
with Charles for the secret treaty with Louis, the State and family
politics were clearly in a knot. Meanwhile the Spanish ambassador kept
pressing Montague to interfere in favour of Marsilly. After Montague’s
puzzled note had been read to the English Foreign Committee on May 23,
Arlington offered explanations. Marsilly came to England, he said, when
Charles was entering into negotiations for peace with Holland, and when
France seemed likely to oppose the peace. No proposition was made to him
or by him. Peace being made, Marsilly was given money to take him out
of the country. He wanted the King to renew his alliance with the Swiss
cantons, but was told that the cantons must first expel the regicides
of Charles I. He undertook to arrange this, and some eight months later
came back to England. ‘He was coldly used, and I was complained of for
not using so important a man well enough.’
*Cf. Le Secret du Roi, by the Duc de Broglie.
As we saw, Marsilly expressed the most effusive gratitude to Arlington,
which does not suggest cold usage. Arlington told the complainers that
Marsilly was ‘another man’s spy,’ what man’s, Dutch, Spanish, or even
French, he does not explain. So Charles gave Marsilly money to go away.
He was never trusted with anything but the expulsion of the regicides
from Switzerland. Arlington was ordered by Charles to write a letter
thanking Balthazar for his good offices.
These explanations by Arlington do not tally with Marsilly’s
communications to him, as cited at the beginning of this inquiry.
Nothing is said in these about getting the regicides of Charles I.
out of Switzerland: the paper is entirely concerned with bringing the
Protestant Cantons into anti-French League with England, Holland, Spain,
and even Sweden. On the other hand, Arlington’s acknowledged letter
to Balthazar, carried by Marsilly, may be the ‘commission’ of which
Marsilly boasted. In any case, on June 2, Charles gave Colbert, the
French ambassador, an audience, turning even the Duke of York out of the
room. He then repeated to Colbert the explanations of Arlington, already
cited, and Arlington, in a separate interview, corroborated Charles.
So Colbert wrote to Louis (June 3, 1669); but to de Lyonne, on the same
day, ‘I trust that you will extract from Marsilly much matter for the
King’s service. IT SEEMED TO ME THAT MILORD D’ARLINGTON WAS UNEASY ABOUT
IT [EN AVAIT DE L’INQUIETUDE].... There is here in England one Martin’
(Eustace Dauger), ‘who has been that wretch’s valet, and who left him
in discontent.’ Colbert then proposes to examine Martin, who may know
a good deal, and to send him into France. On June 10, Colbert writes to
Louis that he expects to see Martin.*
*Bibl. Nat., Fonds Francais, No. 10665.
On June 24, Colbert wrote to Louis about a conversation with Charles.
It is plain that proofs of a murder-plot by Marsilly were scanty or
non-existent, though Colbert averred that Marsilly had discussed the
matter with the Spanish Ministers. ‘Charles knew that he had had much
conference with Isola, the Spanish ambassador.’ Meanwhile, up to July 1,
Colbert was trying to persuade Marsilly’s valet to go to France, which
he declined to do, as we have seen. However, the luckless lad, by nods
and by veiled words, indicated that he knew a great deal. But not by
promise of security and reward could the valet be induced to return to
France. ‘I might ask the King to give up Martin, the valet of Marsilly,
to me,’ Colbert concludes, and, by hook or by crook, he secured the
person of the wretched man, as we have seen. In a postscript, Colbert
says that he has heard of the execution of Marsilly.
By July 19, as we saw in the previous essay, Louvois was bidding
Saint-Mars expect, at Pignerol from Dunkirk, a prisoner of the highest
political importance, to be guarded with the utmost secrecy, yet a
valet. That valet must be Martin, now called Eustache Dauger, and his
secret can only be connected with Marsilly. It may have been something
about Arlington’s negotiations through Marsilly, as compromising Charles
II. Arlington’s explanations to the Foreign Committee were certainly
incomplete and disingenuous. He, if not Charles, was more deeply engaged
with Marsilly than he ventured to report. But Marsilly himself avowed
that he did not know why he was to be executed.
Executed he was, in circumstances truly hideous. Perwich, June 5, wrote
to an unnamed correspondent in England: ‘They have all his papers,
which speak much of the Triple Alliance, but I know not whether they
can lawfully hang him for this, having been naturalised in Holland, and
taken in a privileged country’ (Switzerland). Montague (Paris, June
22, 1669) writes to Arlington that Marsilly is to die, so it has been
decided, for ‘a rape which he formerly committed at Nismes,’ and after
the execution, on June 26, declares that, when broken on the wheel,
Marsilly ‘still persisted that he was guilty of nothing, nor did know
why he was put to death.’
Like Eustache Dauger, Marsilly professed that he did not know his own
secret. The charge of a rape, long ago, at Nismes, was obviously trumped
up to cover the real reason for the extraordinary vindictiveness with
which he was pursued, illegally taken, and barbarously slain. Mere
Protestant restlessness on his part is hardly an explanation. There was
clearly no evidence for the charge of a plot to murder Louis XIV., in
which Colbert, in England, seems to have believed. Even if the French
Government believed that he was at once an agent of Charles II., and at
the same time a would-be assassin of Louis XIV., that hardly accounts
for the intense secrecy with which his valet, Eustache Dauger, was
always surrounded. Did Marsilly know of the Secret Treaty, and was it
from him that Arlington got his first inkling of the royal plot? If
so, Marsilly would probably have exposed the mystery in Protestant
interests. We are entirely baffled.
In any case, Francis Vernon, writing from Paris to Williamson (?) (June
19-29 1669), gave a terrible account of Marsilly’s death. (For the
letter, see Note V.) With a broken piece of glass (as we learn from
another source), Marsilly, in prison, wounded himself in a ghastly
manner, probably hoping to die by loss of blood. They seared him with a
red-hot iron, and hurried on his execution. He was broken on the wheel,
and was two hours in dying (June 22). Contrary to usage, a Protestant
preacher was brought to attend him on the scaffold. He came most
reluctantly, expecting insult, but not a taunt was uttered by the
fanatic populace. ‘He came up the scaffold, great silence all about.’
Marsilly lay naked, stretched on a St. Andrew’s cross. He had seemed
half dead, his head hanging limp, ‘like a drooping calf.’ To greet the
minister of his own faith, he raised himself, to the surprise of all,
and spoke out loud and clear. He utterly denied all share in a scheme to
murder Louis. The rest may be read in the original letter (Note V.).
So perished Roux de Marsilly; the history of the master throws no light
on the secret of the servant. That secret, for many years, caused the
keenest anxiety to Louis XIV. and Louvois. Saint-Mars himself must
not pry into it. Yet what could Dauger know? That there had been a
conspiracy against the King’s life? But that was the public talk of
Paris. If Dauger had guilty knowledge, his life might have paid for it;
why keep him a secret prisoner? Did he know that Charles II. had been
guilty of double dealing in 1668-1669? Probably Charles had made some
overtures to the Swiss, as a blind to his private dealings with Louis
XIV., but, even so, how could the fact haunt Louis XIV. like a ghost? We
leave the mystery much darker than we found it, but we see reason good
why diplomatists should have murmured of a crusade against the cruel
and brigand Government which sent soldiers to kidnap, in neighbouring
states, men who did not know their own crime.
To myself it seems not improbable that the King and Louvois were but
stupidly and cruelly nervous about what Dauger MIGHT know. Saint-Mars,
when he proposed to utilise Dauger as a prison valet, manifestly did not
share the trembling anxieties of Louis XIV. and his Minister; anxieties
which grew more keen as time went on. However, ‘a soldier only has
his orders,’ and Saint-Mars executed his orders with minute precision,
taking such unheard-of precautions that, in legend, the valet blossomed
into the rightful king of France.
* * *
APPENDIX.
ORIGINAL PAPERS IN THE CASE OF ROUX DE MARSILLY.*
Note I. Letter of Mons. P. du Moulin to Arlington.**
Paris, May ye 19-29, 1669.
My Lord,
. . . . . .
Ever since that Monsieur de Ruvigny was in England last, and upon the
information he gave, this King had a very great desire to seize if it
were possible this Roux de Marsilly, and several persons were sent to
effect it, into England, Holland, Flanders, and Franche Comte: amongst
the rest one La Grange, exempt des Gardes, was a good while in Holland
with fifty of the guards dispersed in severall places and quarters;
But all having miscarried the King recommended the thing to Monsieur de
Turenne who sent some of his gentlemen and officers under him to find
this man out and to endeavour to bring him alive. These men after foure
months search found him att last in Switzerland, and having laid waite
for him as he came out from Monsr Balthazar’s house (a commander well
knowne) they took him and carryed him to Gex before they could be
intercepted and he rescued. This was done only by a warrant from
Monsieur de Turenne but as soone as they came into the french dominions
they had full powers and directions from this court for the bringing of
him hither. Those that tooke him say they found no papers about him, but
that he desired them to write to Monsr Balthazar to desire him to take
care of his papers and to send him THE COMMISSION HE HAD FROM ENGLAND
and a letter being written to that effect it was signed by the prisoner
and instead of sending it as they had promised, they have brought it
hither along with them. THEY DO ALL UNANIMOUSLY REPORT THAT HE DID
CONSTANTLY AFFIRME THAT HE WAS IMPLOYED BY THE KING OF GREAT BRITTAIN
AND DID ACT BY HIS COMMISSION; so that the general discourse here in
towne is that one of the King of England’s agents is in the Bastille;
though att Court they pretend to know nothing of it and would have the
world think they are persuaded he had no relacion to his Majesty. Your
Lordship hath heard by the publique newes how overjoyed this King was
att the bringing of this prisoner, and how farr he expressed his thanks
to the cheife person employed in it, declaring openly that this man had
long since conspired against his life, and agreable to this, Monsieur,
fearing that My lord Ambr. was come to interpose on the prisoner’s
behalfe asked him on Friday last att St. Germains whether that was the
cause of his coming, and told him that he did not think he would speake
for a man that attempted to kill the King. The same report hath been
hitherto in everybody’s mouth but they begin now to mince it att court,
and Monsieur de Ruvigny would have persuaded me yesterday, they had no
such thoughts. The truth is I am apt to believe they begin now to be
ashamed of it: and I am informed from a very good hand that Monsieur de
Lionne who hath been at the Bastille to speake with the prisoner hath
confessed since that he can find no ground for this pretended attempting
to the King’s life, and that upon the whole he was of opinion that this
man had much better been left alone than taken, and did look upon what
he had done as the intemperancy of an ill-settled braine. And to satisfy
your Lordship that they are nettled here, and are concerned to know what
may be the issue of all this, Monsieur de Turenne’s secretary was on
Munday last sent to several forreigne Ministers to pump them and to
learne what their thoughts were concerning this violence committed in
the Dominions of a sovereign and an allye whereupon he was told by one
of them that such proceedings would bring Europe to the necessity of
entering into a Croisade against them, as formerly against the infidels.
If I durst I would acquaint your Lordship with the reflexions of all
publique ministers here and of other unconcerned persons in relation
to his Majesty’s owning or disowning this man; but not knowing the
particulars of his case, nor the grounds his Ma’ty may go upon, I shall
forbeare entering upon this discourse.. ..
Your Lordships’ etc.
P. Du MOULIN.
*State Papers, France, vol. 126.
**Ibid.
------
Note II. Paper endorsed ‘Mr. Montague originally in Cypher. Received May
19, ‘69. Read in foreigne Committee, 23 May. Roux de Marsilli.’*
I durst not venture to sollicite in Monsr Roux Marsilly’s behalfe
because I doe not know whether the King my Master hath imployed him or
noe; besides he is a man, as I have beene told by many people here of
worth, that has given out that hee is resolved to kill the French king
at one time or other, and I think such men are as dangerous to one
king as to another: hee is brought to the Bastille and I believe may be
proceeded against and put to death, in very few daies. There is great
joy in this Court for his being taken, and a hundred thousand crownes,
I am told very privately, set upon his head; the French Ambassador in
England watcht him, and hee has given the intelligence here of his being
employed by the King, and sent into Switzerland by my Master to draw the
Swisses into the Triple League. Hee aggravates the business as much
as hee can to the prejudice of my Master to value his owne service the
more, and they seeme here to wonder that the King my Master should have
imployed or countenanced a man that had so base a design against the
King’s Person, I had a great deal of discourse with Monsieur about it,
but I did positively say that he had noe relation to my knowledge to the
King my Master, and if he should have I make a question or noe whither
in this case the King will owne him. However, my Lord, I had nothing to
doe to owne or meddle in a buisines that I was so much a stranger to....
This Roux Marsilly is a great creature of the B. d’Isola’s, wch makes
them here hate him the more. The Spanish Resident was very earnest with
mee to have done something in behalfe of Marsilly, but I positively
refused.
*State Papers, France, vol. 126.
------
Note III. [A paper endorsed ‘Roux de Marsilli. Read in for. Committee,
23d May.’]*
Roux de Marsilly came hither when your Majesty had made a union with
Holland for making the Peace betwixt the two Crownes and when it was
probable the opposition to the Peace would bee on the side of France.
Marsilly was heard telling of longe things but noe proposition made to
him or by him.
Presently the Peace was made and Marsilly told more plainly wee had no
use of him. A little summe of money was given him to returne as he said
whither he was to goe in Switzerland. Upon which hee wishing his Ma’ty
would renew his allience wth the Cantons hee was answerd his M’ty would
not enter into any comerce with them till they had sent the regicides
out of their Country, hee undertooke it should bee done. Seven or
eight months after wth out any intimation given him from hence or
any expectation of him, he comes hither, but was so coldly used I was
complained off for not using so important a man well enough. I answerd
I saw noe use the King could make of him, because he had no credit in
Switzerlande and for any thing else I thought him worth nothing to us,
but above all because I knew by many circumstances HEE WAS ANOTHER MAN’S
SPY and soe ought not to be paid by his Majesty. Notwithstanding this
his Ma’ty being moved from compassion commanded hee should have some
money given him to carry him away and that I should write to Monsieur
Balthazar thanking him in the King’s name for the good offices hee
rendered in advancing a good understanding betwixt his Ma’ty and the
Cantons and desiring him to continue them in all occasions.
The man was always looked upon as a hot headed and indiscreete man,
and soe accordingly handled, hearing him, but never trusting him with
anything but his own offered and undesired endeavours to gett the
Regicides sent out of Switzerland.
*State Papers, France, vol. 126.
------
Note IV. Letter of W. Perwich to ------ .*
Paris: June 5, 1669.
Honored Sir,
. . . . . .
Roux Marsilly has prudently declared hee had some what of importance to
say but it should bee to the King himselfe wch may be means of respiting
his processe and as he hopes intercession may bee made for him; but
people talk so variously of him that I cannot tell whether hee ought to
bee owned by any Prince; the Suisses have indeed the greatest ground to
reclayme him as being taken in theirs. They have all his papers which
speak much of the Triple Alliance; if they have no other pretext of
hanging him I know not whether they can lawfully for this, hee having
been naturallised in Holland and taken in a priviledged Country....
*State Papers, France, vol. 126.
------
Note V. Francis Vernon to [Mr. Williamson?].*
Paris: June 19-29 1669.
Honored Sir,
My last of the 26th Currt was soe short and soe abrupt that I fear you
can peck butt little satisfaction out of it.
. . . . . .
I did intend to have written something about Marsilly but that I had
noe time then. In my letter to my Lord Arlington I writt that Friday 21
Currt hee wounded himself wch he did not because hee was confronted with
Ruvigny as the Gazettes speake. For he knew before hee should dye, butt
he thought by dismembering himself that the losse of blood would carry
him out of the world before it should come to bee knowne that he had
wounded himselfe. And when the Governor of the Bastille spied the blood
hee said It was a stone was come from him which caused that effusion.
However the governor mistrusted the worst and searcht him to see what
wound he had made. So they seared him and sent word to St. Germaines
which made his execution be hastened. Saturday about 1 of the clock
hee was brought on the skaffold before the Chastelet and tied to St.
Andrew’s Crosse all wch while he acted the Dying man and scarce stirred,
and seemed almost breathlesse and fainting. The Lieutenant General
presst him to confesse and ther was a doctor of the Sorbon who was a
counsellr of the Castelet there likewise to exhort him to disburthen
his mind of any thing which might be upon it. Butt he seemed to take no
notice and lay panting.
Then the Lieutenant Criminel bethought himself that the only way to
make him speake would bee to sende for a ministre soe hee did to Monsr
Daillie butt hee because the Edicts don’t permitt ministres to come
to condemned persons in publique butt only to comfort them in private
before they goe out of prison refused to come till hee sent a huissier
who if hee had refused the second time would have brought him by force.
At this second summons hee came butt not without great expectations
to bee affronted in a most notorious manner beeing the first time a
ministre came to appeare on a scaffold and that upon soe sinister an
occasion. Yet when he came found a great presse of people. All made way,
none lett fall soe much as a taunting word. Hee came up the Scaffold,
great silence all about. Hee found him lying bound stretched on St
Andrew’s Crosse, naked ready for execution. Hee told him hee was
sent for to exhort him to die patiently and like a Christian. Then
immediately they were all surprized to see him hold up his head wch he
lett hang on one side before like a drooping calfe and speake as loud
and clear as the ministre, to whom he said with a chearful air hee was
glad to see him, that hee need not question butt that hee would dye like
a Christian and patiently too. Then hee went and spoke some places of
Scripture to encourage him which he heard with great attention. They
afterward came to mention some things to move him to contrition, and
there hee tooke an occasion to aggravate the horrour of a Crime of
attempting against the King’s person. Hee said hee did not know what hee
meant. For his part hee never had any evill intention against the Person
of the King.
The Lieutenant Criminel stood all the while behind Monsieur Daillie and
hearkened to all and prompted Monsr Daillie to aske him if hee had said
there were 10 Ravillacs besides wch would doe the King’s businesse. Hee
protested solemnly hee never said any such words or if hee did hee never
remembred, butt if hee had it was with no intention of Malice.
Then Monsieur Daillie turned to the people and made a discourse in
vindication of those of the Religion that it was no Principle of theirs
attempts on the persons of King[s] butt only loyalty and obedience. This
ended hee went away; hee staid about an hour in all, and immediately as
soon as he was gone, they went to their worke and gave him eleven blows
with a barre and laid him on the wheele. Hee was two houres dying. All
about Monsr Daillie I heard from his own mouth for I went to wait on him
because it was reported hee had said something concerning the King of
England butt hee could tell mee nothing of that. There was a flying
report that he should say going from the Chastelet--The Duke of
York hath done mee a great injury--The Swisses they say resented his
[Marsilly’s] taking and misst butt half an hour to take them which
betrayed him [the monk] after whom they sent. When he was on the wheele
hee was heard to say Le Roy est grand tyrant, Le Roy me traitte d’un
facon fort barbare. All that you read concerning oaths and dying en
enrage is false all the oaths hee used being only asseverations to Monsr
Daillie that he was falsely accused as to the King’s person.
Sr I am etc
FRANS. VERNON.
*State Papers, France, vol. 126.
------
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.
------
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 the dead magistrate. He had the story
from a Mr. Angus, a clergyman, who had it from ‘a young man in a grey
coat,’ in a bookseller’s shop near St. Paul’s, about two o’clock in the
afternoon. Angus hurried to tell Bishop Burnet, who sent him on to Dr.
Lloyd.*** Either the young man in the grey coat knew too much, or a mere
rumour, based on a conjecture that Godfrey had fallen on his own sword,
proved to be accurate by accident; a point to be remembered. According
to Roger Frith, at two o’clock he heard Salvetti, the ambassador of the
Duke of Tuscany, say: ‘Sir E. Godfrey is dead... the young Jesuits are
grown desperate; the old ones would do no such thing.’ This again may
have been a mere guess by Salvetti.****
*Pollock, Popish Plot, pp. 95, 96.
**Brown in Brief History, iii. pp. 212-215, 222.
***L’Estrange, Brief History, iii. pp. 87-89.
****Lords’ MSS. p. 48, October 24.
In the circumstances of the finding of the body it would have been
correct for Constable Brown to leave it under a guard till daylight and
the arrival of surgical witnesses, but the night was threatening, and
Brown ordered the body to be lifted; he dragged out the sword with
difficulty, and had the dead man carried to the White House Inn. There,
under the candles, the dead man, as we said, was recognised for Sir
Edmund Berry Godfrey, a very well-known justice of the peace and wood
and coal dealer. All this occurred on Thursday, October 17, and
Sir Edmund had not been seen by honest men and thoroughly credible
witnesses, at least, since one o’clock on Saturday, October 12. Then he
was observed near his house in Green Lane, Strand, but into his house he
did not go.
Who, then, killed Sir Edmund?
The question has never been answered, though three guiltless men were
later hanged for the murder. Every conceivable theory has been tried;
the latest is that of Mr. Pollock: Godfrey was slain by ‘the Queen’s
confessor,’ Le Fevre, ‘a Jesuit,’ and some other Jesuits, with lay
assistance.* I have found no proof that Le Fevre was either a Jesuit or
confessor of the Queen.
*Pollock, The Popish Plot, Duckworth, London, 1903.
As David Hume says, the truth might probably have been discovered, had
proper measures been taken at the moment. But a little mob of horse and
foot had trampled round the ditch in the dark, disturbing the original
traces. The coroner’s jury, which sat long and late, on October 18 and
19, was advised by two surgeons, who probably, like the rest of the
world, were biassed by the belief that Godfrey had been slain ‘by the
bloody Papists.’ In the reign of mad terror which followed, every one
was apt to accommodate his evidence, naturally, to that belief. If they
did not, then, like the two original finders, Bromwell and Walters, they
might be thrown, heavily ironed, into Newgate.*
*Lords’ MSS. P. 47, note 1.
But when the Popish Plot was exploded, and Charles II. was firm on his
throne, still more under James II., every one was apt to be biassed in
the opposite direction, and to throw the guilt on the fallen party
of Oates, Bedloe, Dugdale, and the other deeply perjured and infamous
informers. Thus both the evidence of 1678-1680, and that collected in
1684-1687, by Sir Roger L’Estrange, J.P. (who took great trouble and was
allowed access to the manuscript documents of the earlier inquiries),
must be regarded with suspicion.*
*L’Estrange, Brief History of the Times, London, 1687.
The first question is cui bono? who had an interest in Godfrey’s death?
Three parties had an interest, first, the Catholics (IF Godfrey knew
their secrets); next, the managers of the great Whig conspiracy in
favour of the authenticity of Oates’s Popish Plot; last, Godfrey
himself, who was of an hereditary melancholy (his father had suicidal
tendencies), and who was involved in a quandary whence he could scarcely
hope to extricate himself with life and honour.
Of the circumstances of Godfrey’s quandary an account is to follow. But,
meanwhile, the theory of Godfrey’s suicide (though Danby is said to have
accepted it) was rejected, probably with good reason (despite the doubts
of L’Estrange, Hume, Sir George Sitwell, and others), by the coroner’s
jury.*
*Sitwell, The First Whig, Sacheverell.
Privately printed, 1894, Sir George’s book--a most interesting volume,
based on public and private papers--unluckily is introuvable. Some years
have passed since I read a copy which he kindly lent me.
The evidence which determined the verdict of murder was that of two
surgeons. They found that the body had been severely bruised, on
the chest, by kicks, blows of a blunt weapon, or by men’s knees. A
sword-thrust had been dealt, but had slipped on a rib; Godfrey’s own
sword had then been passed through the left pap, and out at the back.
There was said to be no trace of the shedding of fresh living blood on
the clothes of Godfrey, or about the ditch. What blood appeared was old,
the surgeons averred, and malodorous, and flowed after the extraction of
the sword.
L’Estrange (1687) argues at great length, but on evidence collected
later, and given under the Anti-Plot bias, that there was much more
‘bloud’ than was allowed for at the inquest. But the early evidence
ought to be best. Again, the surgeons declared that Godfrey had been
strangled with a cloth (as the jury found), and his neck dislocated.
Bishop Burnet, who viewed the body, writes (long after the event):
‘A mark was all round his neck, an inch broad, which showed he was
strangled.... And his neck was broken. All this I saw.’*
*Burnet, History of his own Time, ii. p. 741. 1725.
L’Estrange argued that the neck was not broken (giving an example of a
similar error in the case of a dead child), and that the mark round the
neck was caused by the tightness of the collar and the flow of blood
to the neck, the body lying head downwards. In favour of this view
he produced one surgeon’s opinion. He also declares that Godfrey’s
brothers, for excellent reasons of their own, refused to allow a
thorough post-mortem examination. ‘None of them had ever been opened,’
they said. Their true motive was that, if Godfrey were a suicide,
his estate would be forfeited to the Crown, a point on which they
undoubtedly showed great anxiety.
Evidence was also given to prove that, on Tuesday and Wednesday, October
15 and 16, Godfrey’s body was not in the ditch. On Tuesday Mr. Forsett,
on Wednesday Mr. Harwood had taken Mr. Forsett’s harriers over the
ground, in pursuit of the legendary hare. They had seen no cane or
scabbard; the dogs had found no corpse. L’Estrange replied that, as to
the cane, the men could not see it if they were on the further side of
the bramble-covered ditch. As to the dogs, they later hunted a wood
in which a dead body lay for six weeks before it was found. L’Estrange
discovered witnesses who had seen Godfrey in St. Martin’s Lane on the
fatal Saturday, asking his way to Paddington Woods, others who had seen
him there or met him returning thence. Again, either he or ‘the Devil in
his clothes’ was seen near the ditch on Saturday afternoon. Again,
his clerk, Moore, was seen hunting the fields near the ditch, for his
master, on the Monday afternoon. Hence L’Estrange argued that Godfrey
went to Paddington Woods, on Saturday morning, to look for a convenient
place of suicide: that he could not screw his courage to the sticking
place; that he wandered home, did not enter his house, roamed out again,
and, near Primrose Hill, found the ditch and ‘the sticking place.’ His
rambles, said L’Estrange, could neither have been taken for business nor
pleasure. This is true, if Godfrey actually took the rambles, but the
evidence was not adduced till several years later; in 1678 the witnesses
would have been in great danger. Still, if we accept L’Estrange’s
witnesses for Godfrey’s trip to Paddington and return, perhaps we ought
not to reject the rest.*
*Brief History, iii. pp. 252, 300, 174, 175; State Trials, viii. pp.
1387, 1392, 1393, 1359-1389.
On the whole, it seems that the evidence for murder, not suicide, is
much the better, though even here absolute certainty is not attained.
Granting Godfrey’s constitutional hereditary melancholy, and the double
quandary in which he stood, he certainly had motives for suicide. He was
a man of humanity and courage, had bravely faced the Plague in London,
had withstood the Court boldly on a private matter (serving a writ, as
Justice, on the King’s physician who owed him money in his capacity as a
coal dealer), and he was lenient in applying the laws against Dissenters
and Catholics.
To be lenient was well; but Godfrey’s singular penchant for Jesuits, and
especially for the chief Catholic intriguer in England, was probably the
ultimate cause of his death, whether inflicted by his own hand or those
of others.
2.
We now study Godfrey’s quandary. On June 23, 1678, the infamous
miscreant Titus Oates had been expelled from the Jesuit College of St.
Omer’s, in France. There he may readily have learned that the usual
triennial ‘consult’ of English Jesuits was to be held in London on April
24, but WHERE it was held, namely in the Duke of York’s chambers in
St. James’s Palace, Oates did not know, or did not say. The Duke, by
permitting the Jesuits to assemble in his house, had been technically
guilty of treason in ‘harbouring’ Jesuits, certainly a secret of great
importance, as he was the head and hope of the Catholic cause, and the
butt of the Whigs, who were eager to exclude him from the succession.
Oates had scraps of other genuine news. He returned to London after
his expulsion from St. Omer’s, was treated with incautious kindness by
Jesuits there, and, with Tonge, constructed his monstrous fable of a
Popish plot to kill the King and massacre the Protestant public.
In August, Charles was apprised of the plot, as was Danby, the Lord
Treasurer; the Duke of York also knew, how much he knew is uncertain.
The myth was little esteemed by the King.
On September 6, Oates went to Godfrey, and swore before him, as a
magistrate, to the truth of a written deposition, as to treason. But
Godfrey was not then allowed to read the paper, nor was it left in his
hands; the King, he was told, had a copy.* The thing might have passed
off, but, as King James II. himself writes, he (being then Duke of York)
‘press’d the King and Lord Treasurer several times that the letters’
(letters forged by Oates) ‘might be produced and read, and the business
examined into at the Committee of Foreign Affairs.’** Mr. Pollock calls
the Duke’s conduct tactless. Like Charles I., in the mystery of ‘the
Incident,’ he knew himself guiltless, and demanded an inquiry.
*Kirkby, Complete Narrative, pp. 2, 3, cited by Mr. Pollock. At the
time, it was believed that Godfrey saw the depositions.
**Clarke’s Life
of James II. i. p. 518. Cited from the King’s original Memoirs.
On September 28, Oates was to appear before the Council. Earlier on that
day he again visited Godfrey, handed to him a copy of his deposition,
took oath to its truth, and carried another copy to Whitehall. As we
shall see, Oates probably adopted this course by advice of one of the
King’s ministers, Danby or another. Oates was now examined before the
King, who detected him in perjury. But he accused Coleman, the secretary
of the Duchess of York, of treasonable correspondence with La Chaise,
the confessor of Louis XIV.: he also said that, on April 24, he himself
was present at the Jesuit ‘consult’ in the White Horse Tavern, Strand,
where they decided to murder the King! This was a lie, but they HAD met
on ordinary business of the Society, on April 24, at the palace of the
Duke of York. Had the Jesuits, when tried, proved this, they would not
have saved their lives, and Oates would merely have sworn that they met
AGAIN, at the White Horse.
Godfrey, having Oates’s paper before him, now knew that Coleman was
accused. Godfrey was very intimate with many Jesuits, says Warner, who
was one of them, in his manuscript history.* With Coleman, certainly
a dangerous intriguer, Godfrey was so familiar that ‘it was the form
arranged between them for use when Godfrey was in company and Coleman
wished to see him,’ that Coleman should be announced under the name of
Mr. Clarke.**
* Pollock, p. 91, note 1.
**Ibid. p. 151, note 3. Welden’s evidence before the Lords’ Committee,
House of Lords MSS., p. 48. Mr. Pollock rather overstates the case. We
cannot be certain, from Welden’s words, that Coleman habitually used the
name ‘Clarke’ on such occasions.
It is extraordinary enough to find a rigid British magistrate engaged
in clandestine dealings with an intriguer like Coleman, who, for the
purpose, receives a cant name. If that fact came out in the inquiry into
the plot, Godfrey’s doom was dight, the general frenzy would make men
cry for his blood. But yet more extraordinary was Godfrey’s conduct on
September 28. No sooner had he Oates’s confession, accusing Coleman, in
his hands, than he sent for the accused. Coleman went to the house of
a Mr. (or Colonel) Welden, a friend of Godfrey’s, and to Godfrey it was
announced that ‘one Clarke’ wished to see him there. ‘When they were
together at my house they were reading papers,’ said Welden later, in
evidence.* It cannot be doubted that, after studying Oates’s deposition,
Godfrey’s first care was to give Coleman full warning. James II. tells
us this himself, in his memoirs. ‘Coleman being known to depend on the
Duke, Sir Edmund Bury (sic) Godfrey made choice of him, to send to his
Highness an account of Oates’s and Tongue’s depositions as soon as he
had taken them,’ that is, on September 28.** Apparently the Duke had
not the precise details of Oates’s charges, as they now existed, earlier
than September 28, when they were sent to him by Godfrey.
*See previous note (Pollock, p. 151, note 3.)
**Life of James II. i, p. 534.
It is Mr. Pollock’s argument that, when Godfrey and Coleman went over
the Oates papers, Coleman would prove Oates’s perjury, and would to this
end let out that, on April 24, the Jesuits met, not as Oates swore, at a
tavern, but at the Duke of York’s house, a secret fatal to the Duke and
the Catholic cause. The Jesuits then slew Godfrey to keep the secret
safe.*
*Pollock, p. 153.
Now, first, I cannot easily believe that Coleman would blab this secret
(quite unnecessarily, for this proof of Oates’s perjury could not be,
and was not, publicly adduced), unless Godfrey was already deep in the
Catholic intrigues. He may have been, judging by his relations with
Coleman. If Godfrey was not himself engaged in Catholic intrigues,
Coleman need only tell him that Oates was not in England in April, and
could not have been, as he swore he was, at the ‘consult.’ Next, Godfrey
was not the man (as Mr. Pollock supposes) to reveal his knowledge to the
world, from a sense of duty, even if the Court ‘stifled the plot.’ Mr.
Pollock says: ‘Godfrey was, by virtue of his position as justice of
the peace, a Government official.... Sooner or later he would certainly
reveal it.... The secret... had come into the hands of just one of the
men who could not afford, even if he might wish, to retain it.’* Mr.
Pollock may conceive, though I do not find him saying so, that Godfrey
communicated Oates’s charges to Coleman merely for the purpose of
‘pumping’ him and surprising some secret. If so he acted foolishly.
*Pollock, p. 154.
In fact, Godfrey was already ‘stifling the plot.’ A Government official,
he was putting Coleman in a posture to fly, and to burn his papers; had
he burned all of them, the plot was effectually stifled. Next, Godfrey
could not reveal the secret without revealing his own misprision of
treason. He would be asked ‘how he knew the secret.’ Godfrey’s lips were
thus sealed; he had neither the wish nor the power to speak out, and
so his knowledge of the secret, if he knew it, was innocuous to the
Jesuits. ‘What is it nearer?’ Coleman was reported, by a perjured
informer, to have asked.*
*State Trials, vii. 1319. Trial of Lord Stafford, 1680.
To this point I return later. Meanwhile, let it be granted that Godfrey
knew the secret from Coleman, and that, though, since Godfrey could
not speak without self-betrayal--though it was ‘no nearer’--still the
Jesuits thought well to mak sikker and slay him.
Still, what is the evidence that Godfrey had a mortal secret? Mr.
Pollock gives it thus: ‘He had told Mr. Wynnel that he was master of
a dangerous secret, which would be fatal to him. “Oates,” he said, “is
sworn and is perjured.”’ * These sentences are not thus collocated in
the original. The secret was not, as from Mr. Pollock’s arrangement it
appears to be, that Oates was perjured.
*Pollock, p. 150.
The danger lay, not in knowledge that Oates was perjured--all the
Council knew the King to have discovered that. ‘Many believed it,’ says
Mr. Pollock. ‘It was not an uncommon thing to say.’* The true peril, on
Mr. Pollock’s theory, was Godfrey’s possession of PROOF that Oates was
perjured, that proof involving the secret of the Jesuit ‘consult’ of
April 14, AT THE DUKE OF YORK’S HOUSE. But, by a singular oversight,
Mr. Pollock quotes only part of what Godfrey said to Wynell (or Wynnel)
about his secret. He does not give the whole of the sentence uttered by
Wynell. The secret, of which Godfrey was master, on the only evidence,
Wynell’s, had nothing to do with the Jesuit meeting of April 24. Wynell
is one of L’Estrange’s later witnesses. His words are:
Godfrey: ‘The (Catholic) Lords are as innocent as you or I. Coleman will
die, but not the Lords.’
Wynell: ‘If so, where are we then?’
Godfrey: ‘Oates is sworn and is perjured.’
* * *
‘Upon Wynell’s asking Sir Edmund some time why he was so melancholy, his
answer has been, “he was melancholy because he was master of a dangerous
secret that would be fatal to him, THAT HIS SECURITY WAS OATE’S
DEPOSITION, THAT THE SAID OATES HAD FIRST DECLARED IT TO A PUBLIC
MINISTER, AND SECONDLY THAT HE CAME TO SIR EDMUND BY HIS (the
Minister’s) DIRECTION.” **
*Pollock, p. 152.
**L’Estrange, part iii. p. 187.
We must accept all of Mr. Wynell’s statement or none; we cannot accept,
like Mr. Pollock, only Godfrey’s confession of owning a dangerous
secret, without Godfrey’s explanation of the nature of the danger.
Against THAT danger (his knowing and taking no action upon what Oates
had deposed) Godfrey’s ‘security’ was Oates’s other deposition, that his
information was already in the Minister’s hands, and that he had come to
Godfrey by the Minister’s orders. The invidiousness of knowing and
not acting on Oates’s ‘dangerous secret,’ Godfrey hoped, fell on the
Minister rather than on himself. And it did fall on Danby, who was later
accused of treason on this very ground, among others. Such is Wynell’s
evidence, true or false. C’est a prendre ou a laisser in bulk, and in
bulk is of no value to Mr. Pollock’s argument.
That Godfrey was in great fear after taking Oates’s deposition, and
dealing with Coleman, is abundantly attested. But of what was he afraid,
and of whom? L’Estrange says, of being made actual party to the plot,
and not of ‘bare misprision’ only, the misprision of not acting on
Oates’s information.* It is to prove this point that L’Estrange cites
Wynell as quoted above. Bishop Burnet reports that, to him, Godfrey said
‘that he believed he himself should be knocked on the head.’** Knocked
on the head by whom? By a frightened Protestant mob, or by Catholic
conspirators? To Mr. Robinson, an old friend, he said, ‘I do not fear
them if they come fairly, and I shall not part with my life tamely.’
Qu’ils viennent! as Tartarin said, but who are ‘they’? Godfrey said that
he had ‘taken the depositions very unwillingly, and would fain have
had it done by others.... I think I shall have little thanks for my
pains.... Upon my conscience I believe I shall be the first martyr.’***
He could not expect thanks from the Catholics: it was from the frenzied
Protestants that he expected ‘little thanks.’
*L’Estrange, iii. p. 187.
**Burnet, ii. p. 740.
***State Trials, vii. pp. 168, 169.
Oates swore, and, for once, is corroborated, that Godfrey complained ‘of
receiving affronts from some great persons (whose names I name not now)
for being so zealous in this business.’ If Oates, by ‘great persons,’
means the Duke of York, it was in the Duke’s own cause that Godfrey had
been ‘zealous,’ sending him warning by Coleman. Oates added that others
threatened to complain to Parliament, which was to meet on October 21,
that Godfrey had been ‘too remiss.’ Oates was a liar, but Godfrey, in
any case, was between the Devil and the deep sea. As early as October
24, Mr. Mulys attested, before the Lords, Godfrey’s remark, ‘he had
been blamed by some great men for not having done his duty, and by
other great men for having done too much.’ Mulys corroborates Oates.*
If Godfrey knew a secret dangerous to the Jesuits (which, later, was a
current theory), he might be by them silenced for ever. If his conduct,
being complained of, was examined into by Parliament, misprision of
treason was the lowest at which his offence could be rated. Never was
magistrate in such a quandary. But we do not know, in the state of the
evidence, which of his many perils he feared most, and his possession of
‘a dangerous secret’ (namely, the secret of the consult of April 24) is
a pure hypothesis. It is not warranted, but refuted, by Godfrey’s own
words as reported by Wynell, when, unlike Mr. Pollock, we quote Wynell’s
whole sentence on the subject. (see previous exchange between Godfrey
and Wynell.)
*Lords’ MSS., P. 48.
3.
The theories of Godfrey’s death almost defy enumeration. For suicide,
being a man of melancholic temperament, he had reasons as many and as
good as mortal could desire. That he was murdered for not being active
enough in prosecuting the plot, is most improbable. That he was taken
off by Danby’s orders, for giving Coleman and the Duke of York early
warning, is an absurd idea, for Danby could have had him on THAT score
by ordinary process of law. That he was slain by Oates’s gang, merely to
clinch the fact that a plot there veritably was, is improbable. At the
same time, Godfrey had been calling Oates a perjurer: he KNEW that Oates
was forsworn. This was an unsafe thing for any man to say, but when
the man was the magistrate who had read Oates’s deposition, he invited
danger. Such were the chances that Godfrey risked from the Plot party.
The Catholics, on the other hand, if they were aware that Godfrey
possessed the secret of the Jesuit meeting of April 24, and if they
deemed him too foolish to keep the secret in his own interest, could not
but perceive that to murder him was to play into the hands of the Whigs
by clinching the belief in a Popish plot. Had they been the murderers,
they would probably have taken his money and rings, to give the idea
that he had been attacked and robbed by vulgar villains. If they ‘were
not the damnedest fools’ (thus freely speaks L’Estrange), they would
not have taken deliberate steps to secure the instant discovery of the
corpse. Whoever pitched Godfrey’s body into the bramble-covered
ditch, meant it to be found, for his cane, scabbard, and so on were
deliberately left outside of the ditch. Your wily Jesuit would have
caused the body to disappear, leaving the impression that Godfrey had
merely absconded, as he had the best reasons for doing. On the other
hand, Oates’s gang would not, if they first strangled Godfrey, have run
his own sword through his body, as if he had committed suicide--unless,
indeed, they calculated that this would be a likely step for your wily
Jesuit to take, in the circumstances. Again, an educated ‘Jesuit,’ like
Le Fevre, ‘the Queen’s confessor,’ would know that the sword trick was
futile; even a plain man, let alone a surgeon, could detect a wound
inflicted on a corpse four or five days old.
Two other theories existed, first, that Godfrey hanged himself, and that
his brothers and heirs did the sword trick, to suggest that he had not
committed suicide by strangulation, but had been set on and stabbed with
his own sword. In that case, of course, the brothers would have removed
his rings and money, to prove that he had been robbed. The other theory,
plausible enough, held that Godfrey was killed by Catholics, NOT because
he took Oates’s deposition (which he was bound to do), but because
he officiously examined a number of persons to make discoveries. The
Attorney-General at the trial of Godfrey’s alleged murderers (February
1679), declared that Sir Edmund had taken such examinations: ‘we have
proof that he had some... perhaps some more than are now extant’ * This
theory, then, held that he was taken off to prevent his pursuing his
zealous course, and to seize the depositions which he had already
taken. When this was stated to Charles II., on November 7, 1678, by the
perjured Bedloe, the King naturally remarked: ‘The parties were still
alive’ (the deponents) ‘to give the informations.’ Bedloe answered, that
the papers were to be seized ‘in hopes the second informations taken
from the parties would not have agreed with the first, and so the thing
would have been disproved.’** This was monstrously absurd, for the
slayers of Godfrey could not have produced the documents of which they
had robbed him.
*State Trials, vii. p. 163.
**Pollock, p. 385.
The theory that Sir Edmund was killed because Coleman had told him too
many secrets did not come to general knowledge till the trial of
Lord Stafford in 1680. The hypothesis--Godfrey slain because, through
Coleman, he knew too many Catholic secrets--is practically that of Mr.
Pollock. It certainly does supply a motive for Godfrey’s assassination.
Hot-headed Catholics who knew, or suspected, that Godfrey knew too much,
MAY have killed him for that reason, or for the purpose of seizing his
papers, but it is improbable that Catholics of education, well aware
that, if he blabbed, Godfrey must ruin himself, would have put their
hands into his blood, on the mere chance that, if left alive, he might
betray both himself and them.
4.
It is now necessary to turn backward a little and see what occurred
immediately after the meeting of Coleman and Godfrey on September 28.
On that day, Oates gave his lying evidence before the Council: he was
allowed to go on a Jesuit drive, with warrants and officers; he caught
several of the most important Jesuits. On September 29, the King heard
his tale, and called him a ‘lying knave.’ None the less he was sent on
another drive, and, says Mr. Pollock, ‘before dawn most the Jesuits of
eminence in London lay in gaol.’ But Le Fevre, ‘the Queen’s confessor,’
and the other ‘Jesuits’ whom Mr. Pollock suspects of Godfrey’s murder,
were not taken. Is it likely (it is, of course, possible) that they
stayed on in town, and killed Godfrey twelve days later?
Meanwhile Coleman, thanks to Godfrey’s warning, had most of September
28, the night of that day, and September 29, wherein to burn his papers
and abscond. He did neither; if he destroyed some papers, he left others
in his rooms, letters which were quite good enough to hang him for high
treason, as the law stood. Apparently Coleman did not understand his
danger. On Sunday night, September 29, a warrant for his apprehension
was issued, and for the seizure of his papers. ‘He came voluntarily in
on Monday morning,’ having heard of the warrant. This is not the conduct
of a man who knows himself guilty. He met the charges with disdain,
and made so good a case that, instead of being sent to Newgate, he was
merely entrusted to a messenger, who was told ‘to be very civil to Mr.
Coleman.’
Charles II. went to the Newmarket Autumn Meeting, Coleman’s papers were
examined, and ‘sounded so strange to the Lords’ that they sent him to
Newgate (October 1). The papers proved that Coleman, years before, had
corresponded (as Oates had sworn) with the confessor of Louis XIV. and
had incurred the technical guilt of treason. Either Coleman did not
understand the law and the measure of his offence (as seems probable),
or he thought his papers safely hidden. But the heather was on fire. The
belief in Oates’s impossible Plot blazed up, ‘hell was let loose’.*
*State Trials, vii. p. 29.
Coleman had thought himself safe, says James II., then Duke of York.
‘The Duke perceiving’ (from Godfrey’s information of September 28)
‘Oates had named Coleman, bade him look to himself, for he was sure to
find no favour, and therefore, if he had any papers that might hurt him,
to secure them immediately; but he, apprehending no danger, let them
be seized, however kept close himself, and sent to advise with the Duke
whether he should deliver himself up or not. The Duke replyd, “He knew
best what was in his papers; if they contain’d any expression which
could be wrested to an ill sence, he had best not appear, otherwise
the surrendering himself would be an argument of innocency.” He did
accordingly,’ and was condemned in November, and hanged.*
*Life of James II., i. p. 534.
King James’s tale agrees with the facts of Coleman’s surrender. ‘He came
in voluntarily.’ He did not appreciate the resources of civilisation at
the service of the English law of treason: he had dabbled in intrigue
without taking counsel’s advice, and knowing for certain that Oates
was an inconsistent liar, Coleman took his chance with a light heart.
However, not only did some of his letters bring him (though he could
not understand the fact) within the elastic law of treason; but Oates’s
evidence was accepted when conspicuously false; Coleman was not
allowed to produce his diary and prove an alibi as to one of Oates’s
accusations, and a new witness, Bedloe, a perjurer who rivalled Oates,
had sprung up out of the filth of London streets. So Coleman swung for
it, as Godfrey, according to Wynell, had prophesied that he would.
Coleman’s imprisonment began twelve days before Godfrey’s disappearance.
At Coleman’s trial, late in November, a mere guess was given that
Godfrey was slain to prevent him (a Protestant martyr) from blabbing
Catholic secrets. This cause of Godfrey’s taking off was not alleged by
Bedloe. This man, a notorious cosmopolitan rogue, who had swindled his
way through France and Spain, was first heard of in the Godfrey case at
the end of October. He wrote to the Secretaries of State from Bristol
(L’Estrange says from Newbury on his way to Bristol), offering
information, as pardon and reward had been promised to contrite
accomplices in the murder. He came to town, and, on November 7, gave
evidence before the King. Bedloe gave himself out as a Jesuit agent;
concerning the Plot he added monstrous inventions to those of Oates.
‘As to Sir Edmund Godfrey; was promised 2,000 guineas to be in it by
Le Fere’ (Le Fevre, ‘the Queen’s confessor),’ [by] ‘my Lord Bellasis
gentleman, AND THE YOUNGEST OF THE WAITERS IN THE QUEENE’S CHAPEL, IN A
PURPLE GOWN, and to keep the people orderly.’*
*See Pollock, pp. 384, 387. The report is from Secretary Coventry’s
MSS., at Longleat. The evidence as to Bedloe’s deposition before the
King (November 7) is in a confused state. Mr. Pollock prints (pp. 383,
384, cf. p. 110) a document from ‘Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 11058, f. 244.’
This is also given, with the same erroneous reference, by Mr. Foley, in
Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, vol. v. p. 30,
note. The right reference is 11055. The document is quite erroneously
printed, with variations in error, by Mr. Foley and Mr. Pollock. Bedloe
really said that Godfrey was lured into Somerset House Yard, not into
‘some house yard’ (Foley), or ‘into a house yard’ (Pollock). Bedloe, so
far, agreed with Prance, but, in another set of notes on his deposition
(Longleat MSS., Coventry Papers, xi. 272-274, Pollock, 384-387), he
made Somerset House the scene of the murder. There are other errors. Mr.
Pollock and Mr. Foley make Bedloe accuse Father Eveley, S.J., in whom
I naturally recognised Father Evers or Every, who was then at Tixall in
Staffordshire. The name in the MS. is ‘Welch,’ not Eveley. The MS. was
manifestly written not before September 12. It does not appear that
Bedloe, on November 7, knew the plot as invented by Oates, on which
compare Mr. Pollock, p. 110, who thinks that ‘it is quite possible that
Charles II. deceived him,’ Bishop Burnet, ‘intentionally,’ on this head
(Burnet, ii. 745-746, 1725). By printing ‘he acquainted’ instead of ‘he
acquainteth the Lords,’ in the British Museum MS., and by taking the
document, apparently, to be of November 7, Mr. Pollock has been led
to an incorrect conclusion. I am obliged to Father Gerard, S.J., for a
correct transcript of the British Museum MS.; see also Note iii., ‘The
Jesuit Murderers,’ at the end of this chapter, and Father Gerard’s The
Popish Plot and its Latest Historian (Longman’s, 1903).
Bedloe here asserts distinctly that one accomplice was an official of
the Queen’s chapel, in her residence, Somerset House: a kind of verger,
in a purple gown. This is highly important, for the man whom he later
pretended to recognise as this accomplice was not a ‘waiter,’ did not
‘wear a purple gown;’ and, by his own account, ‘was not in the chapel
once a month.’ Bedloe’s recognition of him, therefore, was worthless. He
said that Godfrey was smothered with a pillow, or two pillows, in a room
in Somerset House, for the purpose of securing ‘the examinations’ that
Godfrey had taken. ‘Coleman and Lord Bellasis advised to destroy him.’
His informant was Le Fevre. One Walsh (a ‘Jesuit’), Le Fevre, Lord
Bellasis’s man, and ‘the chapel keeper’ did the deed. The chapel keeper
carried him’ (Godfrey) ‘off.’ ‘HE DID NOT SEE HIM’ (Godfrey) ‘AFTER HE
WAS DEAD.’
On the following day Bedloe told his tale at the bar of the House of
Lords. He now, contradicting himself, swore THAT HE SAW GODFREY’S DEAD
BODY IN SOMERSET HOUSE. He was offered 2,000 guineas to help to carry
him off. This was done by chairmen, ‘retainers to Somerset House,’ on
Monday night (October 14).*
*Pollock, p. 387, Lords’ Journals, xiii. p. 343.
On that night, Bedloe saw Samuel Atkins, Mr. Pepys’s clerk, beside the
corpse, by the light of a dark lantern. Atkins had an alibi, so Bedloe
shuffled, and would not swear to him.
On November 14, before the Lords’ Committee, Bedloe again gave evidence.
The 2,100 pounds were now 4,000 pounds offered to Bedloe, by Le Fevre,
early in October, to kill a man. The attendant in the Queen’s chapel
was at the scene (a pure figment) of the corpse exposed under the dark
lantern. The motive of the murder was to seize Godfrey’s examinations,
which he said he had sent to Whitehall. At a trial which followed in
February 1679, Mr. Robinson, who had known Godfrey for some forty years,
deposed that he had said to him, ‘I understand you have taken several
examinations.’ ‘Truly,’ said he, ‘I have.’ ‘Pray, Sir, have you the
examinations about you, will you please to let me see them?’ ‘No, I have
them not, I delivered them to a person of quality.’*
*State Trials, vii. 168.
This person of quality was not the Duke of York, for it may be noted
that, on the day before his disappearance, Godfrey had, in fact,
received back from the Lord Chief Justice the original copy of Oates’s
depositions. This copy was found in his house, after his death, and
handed over by his brother to the Government.* To get the examinations
was always the motive of the murder, with Bedloe. The hour of Godfrey’s
death was now 2 P.M.; now 3, or 4, or 5 P.M., on October 12. The body
was hidden in various rooms of Somerset House, or under the high altar
in the Queen’s Chapel. The discrepancies never affected the faith given
to Bedloe.
*Lords’ MSS., Hist. MSS. Commission Report, xi. Appendix, part ii.,
pp. 2,3.
At the end of December came in a new accomplice-witness. This was
an Irishman, Miles Prance, a silversmith, who had a business among
Catholics, and worked for the Queen’s Chapel. Unlike all the other
informers, Prance had hitherto been an ordinary fellow enough, with a
wife and family, not a swindling debauchee. He was arrested on December
21, on information given by John Wren, a lodger of his, with whom he had
quarrelled. Wren had noticed that Prance lay out of his own house while
Godfrey was missing, which Prance admitted to be true.*
*Op. cit. p. 51. Prance both said, and denied, that he slept out
while Sir Edmund was missing. He was flurried and self-contradictory.
Bedloe, passing through a room in the House of Commons, saw Prance in
custody, and at once pretended to recognise in him the ‘chapel keeper,’
‘under waiter,’ or ‘man in the purple gown,’ whom he had seen by the
light of a dark lantern, beside Godfrey’s body, in a room of Somerset
House, on October 14. ‘There was very little light’ on that occasion,
Bedloe had said, and he finally refused, we saw, to swear to Atkins,
who had an alibi. But, as to Prance, he said: ‘This is one of the rogues
that I saw with a dark lantern about the body of Sir Edmund, but he was
then in a periwig.’* The periwig was introduced in case Prance had an
alibi: Oates had used the same ‘hedge,’ ‘a periwig doth disguise a man
very much,’ in Coleman’s case.**
*L’Estrange, iii. pp. 52, 53, 65.
**State Trials, vii. 27.
What was Bedloe’s recognition of Prance worth? Manifestly nothing! He
had probably seen Prance (not as a ‘waiter’) in the Queen’s Chapel. Now
he found him in custody. Cautious as regards Atkins, six weeks earlier,
Bedloe was emboldened now by a train of successes. He had sworn away
Coleman’s life. His self-contradictions had been blindly swallowed. If
Prance could prove an alibi, what was that to Bedloe? The light of the
dark lantern had been very bad; the rogue, under that light, had worn a
periwig, which ‘doth disguise a man very much.’ Bedloe could safely say
that he had made an innocent error. Much worse blunders had not impaired
his credit; later he made much worse blunders, undetected. He saw his
chance and took it.
Prance, who denied everything, was hurried to Newgate, and thrown,
without bed or covering, into the freezing ‘condemned hole,’ where he
lay perishing of cold through the night of December 21, December 22,
and the night of that day. On December 23, he offered, no wonder, to
confess. He was examined by the Lords, and (December 24) by the Council.
Prance knew, all the world knew, the details about Godfrey’s bruises;
the state of his neck, and the sword-thrusts. He knew that Bedloe had
located the murder in Somerset House. As proclamations for the men
accused by Bedloe had long been out, he MAY have guessed that Le Fevre,
Walsh, and Pritchard were wanted for Godfrey’s murder, and had been
denounced by Bedloe. But this is highly improbable, for nothing about
Godfrey’s murder is hinted at in the proclamation for Le Fevre, Walsh,
and Pritchard.* We have no reason, then, to suppose that Prance knew
who the men were that Bedloe had accused; consequently he had to select
other victims, innocent men of his acquaintance. But, as a tradesman of
the Queen, Prance knew her residence, Somerset House, the courts, outer
stairs, passages, and so on. He knew that Bedloe professed to have
recognised him there in the scene of the dark lantern.
*Lords’ Journals, xiii. p. 346; Lords’ MSS., p. 59.
Prance had thus all the materials of a confession ready made, but not of
a confession identical with Bedloe’s. He was ‘one of the most acute
and audacious of the Jesuit agents,’ says Mr. Pollock.* Yet Mr. Pollock
argues that for Prance to tell the tale which he did tell, in his
circumstances of cold and terror, required a most improbable ‘wealth
of mental equipment,’ ‘phenomenal powers of memory, imagination, and
coolness,’ if the tale was false.** Therefore Prance’s story of the
murder was true, except in the details as to the men whom he accused.
On December 24, he was taken to the places which he described (certainly
lying in his tale), and preserved consistency, though, after long
search, he could not find one of the rooms in which he said that the
corpse was laid.***
*Pollock, p.166.
**Ibid. p. 146.
***Lords’ Journals, xii. pp. 436-438.
As Prance, by Mr. Pollock’s theory, was one of the most acute of Jesuit
agents, and as he had all the materials, and all the knowledge necessary
for a confession, he had, obviously, no difficulty in making up his
evidence. Even by Mr. Pollock’s showing, he was cool and intellectual
enough; for, on that showing, he adapted into his narrative, very
subtly, circumstances which were entirely false. If, as Mr. Pollock
holds, Prance was astute enough to make a consistent patchwork of fact
and lie, how can it be argued that, with the information at his command,
he could not invent a complete fiction?
Again, Prance, by misstating dates wildly, hoped, says Mr. Pollock, to
escape as a mere liar.* But, when Prance varied in almost every detail
of time, place, motive, and person from Bedloe, Mr. Pollock does not see
that his own explanation holds for the variations. If Prance wished
to escape as a babbling liar, he could not do better than contradict
Bedloe. He DID, but the Protestant conscience swallowed the
contradictions. But again, if Prance did not know the details of
Bedloe’s confession, how could he possibly agree with it?
*Pollock, p. 160.
The most essential point of difference was that Bedloe accused
‘Jesuits,’ Le Fevre, Walsh, and Pritchard, who had got clean away.
Prance accused two priests, who escaped, and three hangers on of
Somerset House, Hill, Berry (the porter), and Green. All three were
hanged, and all three confessedly were innocent. Mr. Pollock reasons
that Prance, if guilty (and he believes him guilty), ‘must have known
the real authors’ of the crime, that is, the Jesuits accused by Bedloe.
‘He must have accused the innocent, not from necessity, but from choice,
and in order to conceal the guilty.’ ‘He knew Bedloe to have exposed the
real murderers, and... he wished to shield them.’* How did he know whom
Bedloe had exposed? How could he even know the exact spot, a room in
Somerset House, where Bedloe placed the murder? Prance placed it in
Somerset YARD.
*Pollock, p. 148.
It is just as easy to argue, on Mr. Pollock’s other line, that Prance
varied from Bedloe in order that the inconsistencies might prove his
own falsehood. But we have no reason to suppose that Prance did know
the details of Bedloe’s confession, as to the motive of the murder,
the hour, the exact spot, and the names of the criminals. Later he told
L’Estrange a palpable lie: Bedloe’s confession had been shown to him
before he made his own. If that were true, he purposely contradicted
Bedloe in detail. But Mr. Pollock rejects the myth. Then how did Prance
know the details given by Bedloe?* Ignorant of Bedloe’s version, except
in two or three points, Prance could not but contradict it. He thus
could not accuse Bedloe’s Jesuits. He did not name other men, as Mr.
Pollock holds, to shield the Jesuits. Practically they did not need
to be shielded. Jesuits with seven weeks’ start of the law were safe
enough. Even if they were caught, were guilty, and had the truth
extracted from them, involving Prance, the truth about HIM would come
out, whether he now denounced them or not. But he did not know that
Bedloe had denounced them.
*Pollock, pp. 142, 143.
Mr. Pollock’s theory of the relation of Bedloe to Godfrey’s murder is
this: Bedloe had no hand in the murder, and never saw the corpse. The
crime was done in Somerset House, ‘the Queen’s confessor,’ Father Le
Fevre, S.J., having singular facilities for entering, with his friends,
and carrying a dead body out ‘through a private door’--a door not
mentioned by any witnesses, nor proved to exist by the evidence of a
chart. This Le Fevre, with Walsh, lived in the same house as Bedloe.
From them, Bedloe got his information. ‘It is easy to conjecture how he
could have obtained it. Walsh and Le Fevre were absent from their rooms,
for a considerable part of the nights of Saturday and Wednesday, October
12 and 16. Bedloe’s suspicions must have been aroused, and, either by
threats or cajolery, he wormed part of the secret out of his friends.
He obtained a general idea of the way in which the murder had been
committed and of the persons concerned in it. One of these was a
frequenter of the Queen’s chapel whom he knew by sight. He thought him
to be a subordinate official there.’*
*Pollock, pp. 157, 158.
On this amount of evidence Bedloe invented his many contradictions. Why
he did not cleave to the facts imparted to him by his Jesuit friends,
we do not learn. ‘A general idea of the way in which the murder was
committed’ any man could form from the state of Godfrey’s body. There
was no reason why Walsh and Le Fevre ‘should be absent from their rooms
on a considerable part of the night of Saturday 12,’ and so excite
Bedloe’s suspicions, for, on his versions, they slew Godfrey at 2 P.M.,
5 P.M., or any hour between. No proof is given that they were in their
lodgings, or in London, during the fortnight which followed Oates’s
three successful Jesuit drives of September 28-30. In all probability
they had fled from London before Godfrey’s murder. No evidence can I
find that Bedloe’s Jesuits were at their lodgings on October 12-16. They
were not sought for there, but at Somerset House.* Two sisters, named
Salvin, were called before the Lords’ Committee, and deposed that Bedloe
and Le Fevre had twice been at their house when Walsh said mass there.**
*Lords’ Journals, xiii. pp. 343 346.
**Ibid. p. 353.
That is all! Bedloe had some acquaintance with the men he accused; so
had Prance with those he denounced. Prance’s victims were innocent, and
against Bedloe’s there is not, so far, evidence to convict a cat on
for stealing cream. He recognised Prance, therefore he really knew the
murderers--that is all the argument.
Mr. Pollock’s theory reposes on the belief, rejected by L’Estrange, that
the Jesuits ‘were the damnedest fools.’ Suppose them guilty. The first
step of a Jesuit, or of any gentleman, about to commit a deliberate
deeply planned murder, is to secure an alibi. Le Fevre did not, or, when
questioned (on Mr. Pollock’s theory) by Bedloe, he would have put him
off with his alibi. Again, ‘a Jesuit,’ ‘the Queen’s confessor,’ does not
do his murders in the Queen’s house: no gentleman does. But, if Le Fevre
did commit this solecism, he would have told Bedloe a different story;
if he confessed to him at all. These things are elementary.
Prance’s confession, as to the share of Hill, Berry, and Green in the
murder, was admittedly false. On one point he stumbled always: ‘Were
there no guards at the usual places at the time of the carrying on this
work?’ he was asked by one of the Lords on December 24,1678. He mumbled,
‘I did not take notice of any.’* He never, on later occasions, could
answer this question about the sentries. Prance saw no sentries, and
there is nowhere any evidence that the sentries were ever asked whether
they saw either Prance, Le Fevre, or Godfrey, in Somerset House or the
adjacent Somerset Yard, on October 12. They were likely to know both the
Queen’s silversmith and ‘the Queen’s confessor,’ and Godfrey they may
have known. Prance and the sentries had, for each other, the secret of
fern-seed, they walked invisible. This, of itself, is fatal to Prance’s
legend.
*Lords’ Journals, xiii. p. 438.
No sooner had Prance confessed than he withdrew his confession. He
prayed to be taken before the King, knelt, and denied all. Next day
he did the same before the Council. He was restored to his pleasant
quarters in Newgate, and recanted his recantation. He again withdrew,
and maintained that his confession was false, before King and Council
(December 30), ‘He knows nothing in the world of all he has said.’ The
Lord Chancellor proposed ‘to have him have the rack.’*
*State Papers, Domestic, Charles II., Dec. 30, 1678, Bundle 408.
Probably he ‘did not have the rack,’ but he had the promise of it, and
nearly died of cold, ironed, in the condemned cell. ‘He was almost dead
with the disorder in his mind, and with cold in his body,’ said Dr.
Lloyd, who visited him, to Burnet. Lloyd got a bed and a fire for
the wretch, who revived, and repeated his original confession.* Lloyd
believed in his sincerity, says Burnet, writing many years later. In
1686, Lloyd denied that he believed.
*Burnet, ii. p. 773.
Prance’s victims, Hill, Berry, and Green, were tried on February 5,
1679. Prance told his story. On one essential point he professed to know
nothing. Where was Godfrey from five to nine o’clock, the hour when he
was lured into Somerset House? He was dogged in fields near Holborn to
somewhere unknown in St. Clement’s. It is an odd fact that, though at
the dinner hour, one o’clock, close to his own house, and to that of
Mr. Welden (who had asked him to dine), Sir Edmund seems to have dined
nowhere. Had he done so, even in a tavern, he must have been recognised.
Probably Godfrey was dead long before 9 P.M. Mr. Justice Wild pressed
Prance on this point of where Godfrey was; he could say nothing.* Much
evidence (on one point absurd) was collected later by L’Estrange, and
is accepted by North in his ‘Examen,’ to prove that, by some of his
friends, Godfrey was reckoned ‘missing’ in the afternoon of the fatal
Saturday.** But no such evidence was wanted when Hill, Berry, and
Green were tried.*** The prosecution, with reckless impudence,
mingled Bedloe’s and Prance’s contradictory lies, and accused Bedloe’s
‘Jesuits,’ Walsh and Le Fevre, in company with Prance’s priests, Gerald
and Kelly.**** Bedloe, in his story before the jury, involved himself in
even more contradictory lies than usual. But, even now, he did not say
anything that really implicated the men accused by Prance, while
Prance said not a word, in Court or elsewhere, about the men accused by
Bedloe.*****
*State Trials, vii. 177.
**This is said in 1681 in A Letter to Miles Prance.
***North, Examen, p. 201.
****State Trials, vii, 178 (Speech of Serjeant Stringer).
*****Ibid. vii. 179-183.
Lord Chief Justice Scroggs actually told the jury that ‘for two
witnesses to agree as to many material circumstances with one another,
that had never conversed together, is impossible.... They agree so
in all things.’* The two witnesses did not agree at all, as we have
abundantly seen, but, in the fury of Protestant fear, any injustice
could be committed, and every kind of injustice was committed at this
trial. Prance later pleaded guilty on a charge of perjury, and well he
might. Bedloe died, and went to his own place with lies in his mouth.
*State Trials, vii. 216.
5.
If I held a brief against the Jesuits, I should make much of a point
which Mr. Pollock does not labour. Just about the time when Prance began
confessing, in London, December 24, 1678, one Stephen Dugdale, styled
‘gentleman,’ was arrested in Staffordshire, examined, and sent up to
town. He was a Catholic, and had been in Lord Aston’s service, but was
dismissed for dishonesty. In the country, at Tixall, he knew a Jesuit
named Evers, and through Evers he professed to know much about the
mythical plot to kill the King, and the rest of the farrago of lies. At
the trial of the five Jesuits, in June 1679, Dugdale told what he had
told privately, under examination, on March 21, 1679.* This revelation
was that Harcourt, a Jesuit, had written from town to Evers, a Jesuit
at Tixall, by the night post of Saturday, October 12, 1678, ‘This very
night Sir Edmundbury (sic) Godfrey is dispatched.’ The letter reached
Tixall by Monday, October 14.
*Fitzherbert MSS; State Trials, vii. 338.
Mr. Pollock writes: ‘Dugdale was proved to have spoken on Tuesday,
October 15, 1678, of the death of a justice of the peace in Westminster,
which does not go far.’* But if this is PROVED, it appears to go all the
way; unless we can explain Dugdale’s information without involving
the guilty knowledge of Harcourt. The proof that Dugdale, on Tuesday,
October 15, spoke at Tixall of Godfrey’s death, two days before
Godfrey’s body was found near London, stands thus: at the trial of the
Jesuits a gentleman, Chetwyn, gave evidence that, on the morning of
Tuesday, October 15, a Mr. Sanbidge told him that Dugdale had talked
at an alehouse about the slaying of a justice of peace of Westminster.
Chetwyn was certain of the date, because on that day he went to
Litchfield races. At Litchfield he stayed till Saturday, October 19,
when he heard from London of the discovery of Godfrey’s body.** Chetwyn
asked Dugdale about this, when Dugdale was sent to town, in December
1678. Dugdale said he remembered the facts, but, as he did not report
them to his examiners (a singular omission), he was not called as a
witness at the trial of Berry, Green, and Hill. Chetwyn later asked
Dugdale why he was not called, and said: ‘Pray let me see the copy of
your deposition sworn before the Council. He showed it me, and there was
not a syllable of it, that I could see, BUT AFTERWARDS IT APPEARED TO BE
THERE.’
*Pollock, p. 341, note 2.
**State Trials, vii. 339, 341,
Lord Chief Justice. ‘That is not very material, if the thing itself be
true.’
Chetwyn. ‘But its not being there made me remember it.’
Its later appearance, ‘there,’ shows how depositions were handled!
Chetwyn, in June 1679, says that he heard of Dugdale’s words as to the
murder, from Mr. Sanbidge, or Sambidge, or Sawbridge. At the trial of
Lord Stafford (1680) Sanbidge ‘took it upon his salvation’ that Dugdale
told him nothing of the matter, and vowed that Dugdale was a wicked
rogue.* Mr. Wilson, the parish clergyman of Tixall, was said to have
heard Dugdale speak of Godfrey’s death on October 14. He also remembered
no such thing. Hanson, a running-man, heard Dugdale talk of the murder
of a justice of the peace at Westminster as early as the morning of
Monday, October 14, 1678: the London Saturday post arrived at Tixall on
Monday morning. Two gentlemen, Birch and Turton, averred that the
news of the murder ‘was all over the country’ near Tixall, on Tuesday,
October 15; but Turton was not sure that he did not hear first of the
fact on Friday, October 18, which, by ordinary post from London, was
impossible.
*State Trials, vii. 1406.
Such was the evidence to show that Dugdale spoke of Godfrey’s death, in
the country, two or three days before Godfrey’s body was found. The fact
can scarcely be said to be PROVED, considering the excitement of men’s
minds, the fallacies of memory, the silence of Dugdale at his first
examination before the Council, Sanbidge’s refusal to corroborate
Chetwyn, and Wilson’s inability to remember anything about a matter
so remarkable and so recent. To deny, like Sanbidge, to be unable to
remember, like Wilson, demanded some courage, in face of the frenzied
terror of the Protestants. Birch confessedly took no notice of the
rumour, when it first reached him, but at the trial of Green, Berry,
and Hill, ‘I told several gentlemen that I did perfectly remember before
Thursday it was discoursed of in the country by several gentlemen where
I lived.’* The ‘several gentlemen’ whom Birch ‘told’ were not called
to corroborate him. In short, the evidence seems to fall short of
demonstrative proof.
*State Trials. vii. 1455.
But, if it were all true, L’Estrange (and a writer who made the
assertion in 1681) collected a good deal of evidence* to show that
a rumour of Godfrey’s disappearance, and probable murder by bloody
Papists, was current in London on the afternoon of the day when he
disappeared, Saturday, October 12.*** Mr. Pollock says that the evidence
is ‘not to be relied on,’ and part of it, attributing the rumour to
Godfrey’s brothers, is absurd. THEY were afraid that Godfrey had killed
himself, not that he was murdered by Papists. That ‘his household could
not have known that he would not return,’ is not to the point. The
people who raised the rumour were not of Godfrey’s household. Nor is it
to the point, exactly, that, being invited to dine on Saturday by Mr.
Welden, who saw him on Friday night, ‘he said he could not tell whether
he should.’** For Wynell had expected to dine with him at Welden’s to
talk over some private business about house property.*** Wynell (the
authority for Godfrey’s being ‘master of a dangerous secret’) did expect
to meet Godfrey at dinner, and, knowing the fears to which Godfrey often
confessed, might himself have originated, by his fussy inquiries, the
rumour that Sir Edmund was missing. The wild excitement of the town
might add ‘murdered by Papists,’ and the rumour might really get into a
letter from London of Saturday night, reaching Tixall by Monday morning.
North says: ‘It was in every one’s mouth, WHERE IS GODFREY? HE HAS
NOT BEEN AT HIS HOUSE ALL THIS DAY, THEY SAY HE IS MURDERED BY THE
PAPISTS.’**** That such a pheemee might arise is very conceivable. In
all probability the report which Bishop Burnet and Dr. Lloyd heard of
the discovery of Godfrey’s body, before it was discovered, was another
rumour, based on a lucky conjecture. It is said that the report of the
fall of Khartoum was current in Cairo on the day of the unhappy event.
Rumour is correct once in a myriad times, and, in October 1678, London
was humming with rumours. THIS report might get into a letter to Tixall,
and, if so, Dugdale’s early knowledge is accounted for; if knowledge he
had, which I have shown to be disputable.
*Letter to Miles Prance, March, 1681. L’Estrange, Brief History,
iii. pp. 195-201.
**Lords’ MSS., p. 48; Pollock, p. 93, and note 2.
***L’Estrange, Brief History, iii. pp. 188, 190, 195.
****Examen, p. 201. Anglicised version of the author’s
original Greek text.
Dugdale’s talk was thought, at the time, to clinch the demonstration
that the Jesuits were concerned in Godfrey’s murder, L’Estrange says,
and he brings in his witnesses to prove, that the London rumour existed,
and could reach the country by post. In fact, Chetwyn, on the evidence
of Sanbidge, suggested this improvement of his original romance to
Dugdale, and Sanbidge contradicted Chetwyn. He knew nothing of the
matter. Such is the value of the only testimony against the Jesuits
which deserves consideration.
We do not propose to unriddle this mystery, but to show that the most
recent and industrious endeavour to solve the problem is unsuccessful.
We cannot deny that Godfrey may have been murdered to conceal Catholic
secrets, of which, thanks to his inexplicable familiarity with Coleman,
he may have had many. But we have tried to prove that we do not KNOW him
to have had any such Catholic secrets, or much beyond Oates’s fables;
and we have probably succeeded in showing that against the Jesuits, as
Sir Edmund’s destroyers, there is no evidence at all.
Had modern men of science, unaffected by political and religious
bias, given evidence equivalent to that of the two surgeons, one might
conceive that Godfrey was probably slain, as Macaulay thought, by
hotheaded Catholics. But I confess to a leaning in favour of the picture
of Godfrey sketched by L’Estrange; of the man confessing to hereditary
melancholy; fretted and alarmed by the tracasseries and perils of his
own position, alarming his friends and endangering himself by his gloomy
hints; settling, on the last night of his life (Friday, October 11),
with morbid anxiety, some details of a parish charity founded by
himself; uncertain as to whether he can dine with Welden (at about one)
next day; seen at that very hour near his own house, yet dining nowhere;
said to have roamed, before that hour, to Paddington Woods and back
again; seen vaguely, perhaps, wandering near Primrose Hill in the
afternoon, and found dead five days later in the bush-covered ditch near
Primrose Hill, his own sword through his breast and back, his body in
the attitude of one who had died a Roman death.
Between us and that conclusion--suicide caused by fear--nothing
stands but the surgical evidence, and the grounds of that evidence are
disputed.
Surgical evidence, however, is a fact ‘that winna ding,’ and I do
not rely on the theory of suicide. But, if Godfrey was murdered by
Catholics, it seems odd that nobody has suggested, as the probable
scene, the Savoy, which lay next on the right to Somerset Yard. The
Savoy, so well described by Scott in Peveril of the Peak, and by
Macaulay, was by this time a rambling, ruinous, labyrinth of lanes and
dilapidated dwellings, tenanted by adventurers and skulking Catholics.
It was an Alsatia, says Macaulay, more dangerous than the Bog of Allen,
or the passes of the Grampians. A courageous magistrate might be lured
into the Savoy to stop a fight, or on any similar pretence; and, once
within a rambling old dwelling of the Hospital, would be in far greater
peril than in the Queen’s guarded residence. Catholic adventurers might
here destroy Godfrey, either for his alleged zeal, or to seize his
papers, or because he, so great a friend of Catholics as he was, might
know too much. The body could much more easily be removed, perhaps by
water, from the Savoy, than from the guarded gates of Somerset House.
Oates knew the Savoy, and said falsely that he had met Coleman there.*
If murder was done, the Savoy was as good a place for the deed as the
Forest of Bondy.
*State Trials, vii. 28.
* * *
NOTE I.
CHARLES II. AND GODFREY’S DEATH.
The Duke of York, speaking of Bedloe’s evidence before the Lords
(November 8), says, ‘Upon recollection the King remembered he was
at Sommerset House himself, at the very time he swore the murder was
committed:... his having been there at that time himself, made it
impossible that a man should be assaulted in the Court, murder’d, and
hurryd into the backstairs, when there was a Centry at every door, a
foot Company on the Guard, and yet nobody see or knew anything of it.*
Now evidence was brought that, at 5 P.M. on Saturday, October 12, the
Queen decided to be ‘not at home.’ But Bedloe placed the murder as early
as 2 P.M., sometimes, and between two o’clock and five o’clock the King
may, as the Duke of York says, have been at Somerset House. Reresby, in
his diary, for November 21, 1678, says that the King told him on that
day that he was ‘satisfied’ Bedloe had given false evidence as to
Godfrey’s murder. The Duke of York probably repeats the King’s grounds
for this opinion. Charles also knew that the room selected by Bedloe as
the scene of the deed was impossible.
Life of James II, i. pp. 527, 528.
NOTE II.
PRANCE AND THE WHITE HOUSE CLUB.
The body of Godfrey was found in a ditch near the White House Tavern,
and that tavern was used as a club by a set of Catholic tradesmen. Was
Prance a member? The landlord, Rawson, on October 24, mentioned as
a member ‘Mr. PRINCE, a silversmith in Holborn.’ Mr. PRANCE was a
silversmith in Covent Garden. On December 21, Prance said that he had
not seen Rawson for a year; he was asked about Rawson. The members of
the club met at the White House during the sitting of the coroner’s
inquest there, on Friday, October 18. Prance, according to the author of
‘A Letter to Miles Prance,’ was present. He may have been a member, he
may have known the useful ditch where Godfrey’s corpse was found, but
this does not rise beyond the value of conjecture.*
*Lords’ MSS. pp. 46, 47, 51.
NOTE III.
THE JESUIT MURDERERS.
There is difficulty in identifying as Jesuits the ‘Jesuits’ accused
by Bedloe. The chief is ‘Father Le Herry,’ * called ‘Le Ferry’ by Mr.
Pollock and Mr. Foley. He also appears as Le Faire, Lee Phaire, Le Fere,
but usually Le Fevre, in the documents. There really was a priest styled
Le Fevre. A man named Mark Preston was accused of being a priest and a
Jesuit. When arrested he declared that he was a married layman with a
family. He had been married in Mr. Langhorne’s rooms, in the Temple,
by Le Fevre, a priest, in 1667, or, at least, about eleven years before
1678.** I cannot find that Le Fevre was known as a Jesuit to the English
members of the Society. He is not in Oates’s list of conspirators. He
does not occur in Foley’s ‘Records,’ vol. v., a very painstaking work.
Nor would he be omitted because accused of a crime, rather he would be
reckoned as more or less of a martyr, like the other Fathers implicated
by the informers. The author of ‘Florus Anglo-Bavaricus’ *** names
‘Pharius’ (Le Phaire), ‘Valschius’ (Walsh), and ‘Atkinsus,’ as denounced
by Bedloe, but clearly knows nothing about them. ‘Atkinsus’ is Mr.
Pepys’s clerk, Samuel Atkins, who had an alibi. Valschius is Walsh,
certainly a priest, but not to be found in Foley’s ‘Records’ as a
Jesuit.
*Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 11055, 245.
**Lords’ Journals, xiii. 331, 332. Lords’ MSS., p. 99.
***Liege, 1685, p. 137.
That Le Fevre was the Queen’s confessor I find no proof. But she had
a priest named Ferrera, who might be confused with Le Faire.* He was
accused of calling a waterman to help to take two persons down the river
on November 6, 1678. He was summoned before the Lords, but we do not
know that he came. Ferrera MAY have been the Queen’s confessor, he was
‘one of the Queen’s priests.’ In 1670 she had twenty-eight priests as
chaplains; twelve were Portuguese Capuchins, six were Benedictines, two,
Dominicans, and the rest seculars.** Mrs. Prance admitted that she knew
‘Mr. Le Phaire, and that he went for a priest.’*** Of Le Fevre, ‘Jesuit’
and ‘Queens confessor,’ I know no more.
*Lords’ MSS., p. 49.
**Maziere Brady, Episcopal Succession in England, p. 124 (1876).
***Lords’ MSS p. 52.
It appears that Mr. Pollock’s authority for styling Le Fevre ‘the
Queen’s confessor’ is a slip of information appended to the Coventry
notes, in the Longleat MSS., on Bedloe’s deposition of November 7.* I
do not know the authority of the writer of the slip. It is admitted
that the authority of a slip pinned on to a letter of Randolph’s is
not sufficient to prove John Knox to have been one of the Riccio
conspirators. The same slip appears to style Charles Walsh a Jesuit of
the household of Lord Bellasis. This Walsh is unknown to Foley.
*Pollock, pp. 155, 157, note 2, in each case.
As to Father Pritchard, a Jesuit, Bedloe, in the British Museum MS.,
accuses ‘Penthard, a layman.’ He develops into Pridgeot, a Jesuit.*
Later he is Father Pritchard, S.J. There was such a Jesuit, and,
according to the Jesuit Annual Letter of 1680, he passed sixteen years
in the South Wales Mission, and never once went to London. In 1680 he
died in concealment.** It is clear that if Le Fevre was the Queen’s
confessor, the sentries at Somerset House could prove whether he was
there on the day of Godfrey’s murder. No such evidence was adduced.
But if Le Fevre was not the Queen’s confessor, he would scarcely have
facilities for smuggling a dead body out of ‘a private door.’
*Longleat MS., Pollock, p. 386.
**Foley, v. 875-877.
IV. THE FALSE JEANNE D’ARC.
Who that ever saw Jeanne d’Arc could mistake her for another woman? No
portrait of the Maid was painted from the life, but we know the light
perfect figure, the black hair cut short like a soldier’s, and we can
imagine the face of her, who, says young Laval, writing to his mother
after his first meeting with the deliverer of France, ‘seemed a thing
all divine.’ Yet even two of her own brothers certainly recognised
another girl as the Maid, five years after her death by fire. It is
equally certain that, eight years after the martyrdom of Jeanne, an
impostor dwelt for several days in Orleans, and was there publicly
regarded as the heroine who raised the siege in 1429. Her family
accepted the impostor for sixteen years. These facts rest on undoubted
evidence.
To unravel the threads of the story is a task very difficult. My table
is strewn with pamphlets, papers, genealogies, essays; the authors
taking opposite sides as to the question, Was Jeanne d’Arc burned at
Rouen on May 30, 1431? Unluckily even the most exact historians (yea,
even M. Quicherat, the editor of the five volumes of documents and
notices about the Maid) (1841-1849) make slips in dates, where dates are
all important. It would add confusion if we dwelt on these errors, or on
the bias of the various disputants.
Not a word was said at the Trial of Rehabilitation in 1452-1456 about
the supposed survival of the Maid. But there are indications of the
inevitable popular belief that she was not burned. Long after the fall
of Khartoum, rumours of the escape of Charles Gordon were current; even
in our own day people are loth to believe that their hero has perished.
Like Arthur he will come again, and from Arthur to James IV. of
Scotland, from James IV. to the Duke of Monmouth, or the son of Louis
XVI., the populace believes and hopes that its darling has not perished.
We destroyed the Mahdi’s body to nullify such a belief, or to prevent
worship at his tomb. In the same way, at Rouen, ‘when the Maid was dead,
as the English feared that she might be said to have escaped, they bade
the executioner rake back the fire somewhat that the bystanders might
see her dead.’* An account of a similar precaution, the fire drawn back
after the Maid’s robes were burned away, is given in brutal detail
by the contemporary diarist (who was not present), the Bourgeois de
Paris.**
*Quicherat, iii. p. 191. These lines are not in MS. 5970. M.
Save, in Jehanne des Armoises, Pucelle d’Orleans, p. 6 (Nancy, 1893),
interpolates, in italics, words of his own into his translation of this
text, which improve the force of his argument!
**Quicherat, iv. p. 471.
In spite of all this, the populace, as reflected in several chronicles,
was uncertain that Jeanne had died. A ‘manuscript in the British Museum’
says: ‘At last they burned her, or another woman like her, on which
point many persons are, and have been, of different opinions.’*
*Save, p. 7, citing Bibliotheque de l’Ecole des Chartes, ii., Second
Series.
This hopeful rumour of the Maid’s escape was certain to arise, populus
vult decipi.
Now we reach a point at which we may well doubt how to array the
evidence. But probably the best plan is first to give the testimony of
undoubted public documents from the Treasury Accounts of the town of
Orleans. In that loyal city the day of the Maid’s death had been duly
celebrated by religious services; the Orleanese had indulged in no
illusions. None the less on August 9, 1436, the good town pays its
pursuivant, Fleur-de-lys, ‘because he had brought letters to the town
FROM JEHANNE LA PUCELLE’! On August 21 money is paid to ‘Jehan du Lys,
brother of Jehanne la Pucelle,’ because he has visited the King, Charles
VII., is returning to his sister, the Maid, and is in want of cash,
as the King’s order given to him was not fully honoured. On October 18
another pursuivant is paid for a mission occupying six weeks. He has
visited the Maid at Arlon in Luxembourg, and carried letters from her to
the King at Loches on the Loire. Earlier, in August, a messenger brought
letters from the Maid, and went on to Guillaume Belier, bailiff of
Troyes, in whose house the real Maid had lodged, at Chinon, in the dawn
of her mission, March 1429. Thus the impostor was dealing, by letters,
with some of the people who knew the Maid best, and was freely accepted
by her brother Jehan.*
*Quicherat, v. pp. 326-327.
For three years the account-books of Orleans are silent about this
strange Pucelle. Orleans has not seen her, but has had Jeanne’s
brother’s word for her reappearance, and the word, probably, of the
pursuivants sent to her. Jeanne’s annual funeral services are therefore
discontinued.
Mention of her in the accounts again appears on July 18, 1439. Money is
now paid to Jaquet Leprestre for ten pints and a chopine of wine given
to DAME JEHANNE DES ARMOISES. On the 29th, 30th, and on August 1, when
she left the town, entries of payments for quantities of wine and food
for Jehanne des Armoises occur, and she is given 210 livres ‘after
deliberation with the town council,’ ‘for the good that she did to the
said town during the siege of 1429.’
The only Jehanne who served Orleans in the siege was Jehanne d’Arc.
Here, then, she is, as Jehanne des Armoises, in Orleans for several
days in 1439, feasted and presented with money by command of the town
council. Again she returns and receives ‘propine’ on September 4.* The
Leprestre who is paid for the wine was he who furnished wine to the real
Maid in 1429.
*Quicherat, v. pp. 331-332.
It is undeniable that the people of Orleans must have seen the impostor
in 1439, and they ceased to celebrate service on the day of the true
Maid’s death. Really it seems as if better evidence could not be that
Jeanne des Armoises, nee Jeanne d’Arc, was alive in 1439. All Orleans
knew the Maid, and yet the town council recognised the impostor.
She is again heard of on September 27, 1439, when the town of Tours pays
a messenger for carrying to Orleans letters which Jeanne wrote to
the King, and also letters from the bailli of Touraine to the King,
concerning Jeanne. The real Jeanne could not write, but the impostor,
too, may have employed a secretary.*
*Quicherat, v. p. 332.
In June 1441 Charles VII. pardoned, for an escape from prison, one de
Siquemville, who, ‘two years ago or thereabouts’ (1439), was sent by the
late Gilles de Raiz, Marechal de France, to take over the leadership of
a commando at Mans, which had hitherto been under ‘UNE APPELEE JEHANNE,
QUI SE DISOIT PUCELLE.’* The phrase ‘one styled Jehanne who called
herself Pucelle’ does not indicate fervent belief on the part of the
King. Apparently this Jeanne went to Orleans and Tours after quitting
her command at Mans in 1439. If ever she saw Gilles de Raiz (the
notorious monster of cruelty) in 1439, she saw a man who had fought in
the campaigns of the true Maid under her sacred banner, argent a dove on
an azure field.**
*Quicherat, v. p. 333.
**She never used the arms given to her and her family by Charles VII.
Here public documents about the impostor fall silent. It is not known
what she was doing between August 9, 1436, and September 1439. At the
earlier date she had written to the town of Orleans; at the later, she
was writing to the King, from Tours. Here an error must be avoided.
According to the author of the ‘Chronicle of the Constable of Alvaro de
Luna,’ * the impostor was, in 1436, sending a letter, and ambassadors,
to the King of Spain, asking him to succour La Rochelle. The ambassadors
found the King at Valladolid, and the Constable treated the letter, ‘as
if it were a relic, with great reverence.’
*Madrid, 1784, p. 131.
The impostor flies high! But the whole story is false.
M. Quicherat held at first that the date and place may be erroneously
stated, but did not doubt that the False Pucelle did send her
ambassadors and letter to the King of Spain. We never hear that the true
Maid did anything of the sort. But Quicherat changed his mind on the
subject. The author of the ‘Chronicle of Alvaro de Luna’ merely cites
a Coronica de la Poncella. That coronica, says Quicherat later, ‘is a
tissue of fables, a romance in the Spanish taste,’ and in this nonsense
occurs the story of the embassy to the Spanish King. That story does not
apply to the False Pucelle, and is not true, a point of which students
of Quicherat’s great work need to be warned; his correction may escape
notice.*
*Revue des Questions Historiques, April 1, 1881, pp. 553-566.
Article by the Comte de Puymaigre.
We thus discard a strong trump in the hand of believers that the
impostor was the real Maid; had a Pucelle actually sent ambassadors to
Spain in 1436, their case would be stronger than it is.
Next, why is the false Pucelle styled ‘Jeanne des Armoises’ in the town
accounts of Orleans in 1439?
This leads us to the proofs of the marriage of the false Pucelle, in
1436, with a Monsieur Robert des Armoises, a gentleman of the Metz
country. The evidence is in a confused state. In the reign of Louis XIV.
lived a Pere Vignier, a savant, who is said to have been a fraudulent
antiquary. Whether this be true or not, his brother, after the death of
Pere Vignier, wrote a letter to the Duc de Grammont, which was published
in the ‘Mercure Galant’ of November, 1683. The writer says that his
brother, Pere Vignier, found, at Metz, an ancient chronicle of the town,
in manuscript, and had a copy made by a notary royal. The extract is
perfectly genuine, whatever the reputation of the discoverer may be.
This portion of the chronicle of the doyen of Saint-Thibaud de Metz
exists in two forms, of which the latter, whoever wrote it, is intended
to correct the former.
In the earlier shape the author says that, on May 20, 1436, the Pucelle
Jeanne came to Metz, and was met by her brothers, Pierre, a knight, and
Jehan, an esquire. Pierre had, in fact, fought beside his sister when
both he and she were captured, at Compiegne, in May 1430. Jehan, as we
have already seen, was in attendance on the false Maid in August 1436.
According to the Metz chronicle, these two brothers of the Maid, on
May 20, 1436, recognised the impostor for their sister, and the
account-books of Orleans leave no doubt that Jehan, at least, actually
did accept her as such, in August 1436, four months after they met in
May. Now this lasting recognition by one, at least, of the brothers, is
a fact very hard to explain.
M. Anatole France offers a theory of the easiest. The brothers went to
Lorraine in May 1436, to see the pretender. ‘Did they hurry to expose
the fraud, or did they not think it credible, on the other hand, that,
with God’s permission, the Saint had risen again? Nothing could seem
impossible, after all that they had seen.... They acted in good faith.
A woman said to them, “I am Jeanne, your sister.” They believed, because
they wished to believe.’ And so forth, about the credulity of the age.
The age was not promiscuously credulous. In a RESURRECTION of Jeanne,
after death, the age did not believe. The brothers had never seen
anything of the kind, nor had the town council of Orleans. THEY had
nothing to gain by their belief, the brothers had everything to gain.
One might say that they feigned belief, in the hope that ‘there was
money in it;’ but one cannot say that about the people of Orleans who
had to spend money. The case is simply a puzzle.*
*Anatole France, ‘La Fausse Pucelle,’ Revue de Famille, Feb. 15,
1891. I cite from the quotation by M. P. Lanery d’Arc in Deux Lettres
(Beauvais, 1894), a brochure which I owe to the kindness of the author.
After displaying feats of horsemanship, in male attire, and being
accepted by many gentlemen, and receiving gifts of horses and jewels,
the impostor went to Arlon, in Luxembourg, where she was welcomed by the
lady of the duchy, Elizabeth de Gorlitz, Madame de Luxembourg. And at
Arlon she was in October 1436, as the town accounts of Orleans have
proved. Thence, says the Metz chronicle, the ‘Comte de Warnonbourg’ (?)
took her to Cologne, and gave her a cuirass. Thence she returned to
Arlon in Luxembourg, and there married the knight Robert des Hermoises,
or Armoises, ‘and they dwelt in their own house at Metz, as long as they
would.’ Thus Jeanne became ‘Madame des Hermoises,’ or ‘Ermaises,’ or, in
the town accounts of Orleans, in 1439, ‘des Armoises.’
So says the Metz chronicle, in one form, but, in another manuscript
version, it denounces this Pucelle as an impostor, who especially
deceived tous les plus grands. Her brothers, we read (the real Maid’s
brothers), brought her to the neighbourhood of Metz. She dwelt with
Madame de Luxembourg, and married ‘Robert des Armoize.’* The Pere
Vignier’s brother, in 1683, published the first, but not the second, of
these two accounts in the ‘Mercure Galant’ for November.
*Quicherat, v. pp. 321-324, cf. iv. 321.
In or about 1439, Nider, a witch-hunting priest, in his Formicarium,
speaks of a false Jeanne at Cologne, protected by Ulrich of Wirtemberg,
(the Metz chronicle has ‘Comte de Warnonbourg’), who took the woman
to Cologne. The woman, says Nider, was a noisy lass, who came eating,
drinking, and doing conjuring feats; the Inquisition failed to catch
her, thanks to Ulrich’s protection. She married a knight, and presently
became the concubine of a priest in Metz.* This reads like a piece of
confused gossip.
*Quicherat, v. pp. 324-325.
Vignier’s brother goes on to say (1683) in the ‘Mercure Galant,’ that
his learned brother found the wedding contract of Jeanne la Pucelle and
Robert des Armoises in the charter chest of the M. des Armoises of his
own day, the time of Louis XIV. The brother of Vignier had himself
met the son of this des Armoises, who corroborated the fact. But ‘the
original copy of this ancient manuscript vanished, with all the papers
of Pere Vignier, at his death.’
Two months later, in the spring of 1684, Vienne de Plancy wrote to the
‘Mercure Galant,’ saying that ‘the late illustrious brother’ of the Duc
de Grammont was fully persuaded, and argued very well in favour of
his opinion, that the actual Pucelle did not die at Rouen, but married
Robert des Armoises. He quoted a genuine petition of Pierre du Lys, the
brother of the real Maid, to the Duc d’Orleans, of 1443. Pierre herein
says he has warred ‘in the company of Jeanne la Pucelle, his sister,
jusqu’a son absentement, and so on till this hour, exposing his body and
goods in the King’s service.’ This, argued M. de Grammont, implied
that Jeanne was not dead; Pierre does not say, feue ma soeur, ‘my late
sister,’ and his words may even mean that he is still with her. [‘Avec
laquelle, jusques a son absentement, ET DEPUIS JUSQUES A PRESENT, il a
expose son corps.’)*
*The petition is in Quicherat, v. pp. 212-214. For Vienne-Plancy
see the papers from the Mercure Galant in Jeanne d’Arc n’a point ete
brulee a Rouen (Rouen, Lanctin, 1872). The tract was published in 100
copies only.
Though no copy of the marriage contract of Jeanne and des Armoises
exists, Quicherat prints a deed of November 7, 1436, in which Robert des
Armoises and his wife, ‘La Pucelle de France,’ acknowledge themselves to
be married, and sell a piece of land. The paper was first cited by Dom
Calmet, among the documents in his ‘Histoire de Lorraine.’ It is rather
under suspicion.
There seems no good reason, however, to doubt the authenticity of the
fact that a woman, calling herself Jeanne Pucelle de France, did, in
1436, marry Robert des Armoises, a man of ancient and noble family.
Hence, in the town accounts of Tours and Orleans, after October 1436, up
to September 1439, the impostor appears as ‘Mme. Jehanne des Armoises.’
In August 1436, she was probably not yet married, as the Orleans
accounts then call her ‘Jehanne la Pucelle,’ when they send their
pursuivants to her; men who, doubtless, had known the true Maid in
1429-1430. These men did not undeceive the citizens, who, at least
till September 1439, accepted the impostor. There is hardly a more
extraordinary fact in history. For the rest we know that, in 1436-1439,
the impostor was dealing with the King by letters, and that she held a
command under one of his marshals, who had known the true Maid well in
1429-1430.
It appears possible that, emboldened by her amazing successes, the false
Pucelle sought an interview with Charles VII. The authority, to be sure,
is late. The King had a chamberlain, de Boisy, who survived till 1480,
when he met Pierre Sala, one of the gentlemen of the chamber of Charles
VIII. De Boisy, having served Charles VII., knew and told Sala the
nature of the secret that was between that king and the true Maid. That
such a secret existed is certain. Alain Chartier, the poet, may have
been present, in March 1429, when the Maid spoke words to Charles VII.
which filled him with a spiritual rapture. So Alain wrote to a foreign
prince in July 1429. M. Quicherat avers that Alain was present: I cannot
find this in his letter.* Any amount of evidence for the ‘sign’ given to
the King, by his own statement, is found throughout the two trials,
that of Rouen and that of Rehabilitation. Dunois, the famous Bastard of
Orleans, told the story to Basin, Bishop of Lisieux; and at Rouen
the French examiners of the Maid vainly tried to extort from her the
secret.** In 1480, Boisy, who had been used to sleep in the bed of
Charles VII., according to the odd custom of the time, told the secret
to Sala. The Maid, in 1429, revealed to Charles the purpose of a secret
prayer which he had made alone in his oratory, imploring light on the
question of his legitimacy.*** M. Quicherat, no bigot, thinks that ‘the
authenticity of the revelation is beyond the reach of doubt.’****
*Quicherat, Apercus Nouveaux, p. 62. Proces, v. p. 133.
**For the complete evidence, see Quicherat, Apercus, pp. 61-66.
***Quicherat, v. p. 280, iv. pp. 258, 259, another and ampler account,
in a MS. of 1500. Another, iv. p. 271: MS. of the period of Louis XII.
****Apercus, p. 60, Paris, 1850.
Thus there was a secret between the true Maid and Charles VII. The King,
of course, could not afford to let it be known that he had secretly
doubted whether he were legitimate. Boisy alone, at some later date, was
admitted to his confidence.
Boisy went on to tell Sala that, ten years later (whether after 1429
or after 1431, the date of the Maid’s death, is uncertain), a pretended
Pucelle, ‘very like the first,’ was brought to the King. He was in a
garden, and bade one of his gentlemen personate him. The impostor was
not deceived, for she knew that Charles, having hurt his foot, then wore
a soft boot. She passed the gentleman, and walked straight to the
King, ‘whereat he was astonished, and knew not what to say, but, gently
saluting her, exclaimed, “Pucelle, my dear, you are right welcome back,
in the name of God, who knows the secret that is between you and me.”’
The false Pucelle then knelt, confessed her sin, and cried for mercy.
‘For her treachery some were sorely punished, as in such a case was
fitting.’*
*Quicherat, v. p. 281. There is doubt as to whether Boisy’s tale
does not refer to Jeanne la Feronne, a visionary. Varlet de Vireville,
Charles VII., iii. p. 425, note 1.
If any deserved punishment, the Maid’s brothers did, but they rather
flourished and prospered, as time went on, than otherwise.
It appears, then, that in 1439-1441 the King exposed the false Pucelle,
or another person, Jeanne la Feronne. A great foe of the true Maid, the
diarist known as the Bourgeois de Paris, in his journal for August 1440,
tells us that just then many believed that Jeanne had not been burned at
Rouen. The gens d’armes brought to Paris ‘a woman who had been received
with great honour at Orleans’--clearly Jeanne des Armoises. The
University and Parlement had her seized and exhibited to the public at
the Palais. Her life was exposed; she confessed that she was no maid,
but a mother, and the wife of a knight (des Armoises?). After this
follows an unintelligible story of how she had gone on pilgrimage to
Rome, and fought in the Italian wars.* Apparently she now joined a
regiment at Paris, et puis s’en alla, but all is very vaguely recorded.
*Quicherat, v. pp. 334, 335; c.f. Lefevre-Pontalis, Les Sources
Allemands, 113-115. Fontemoing, Paris, 1903.
The most extraordinary circumstance remains to be told. Apparently the
brothers and cousins of the true Maid continued to entertain and accept
the impostor! We have already seen that, in 1443, Pierre du Lys, in his
petition to the Duc d’Orleans, writes as if he did not believe in the
death of his sister, but that may be a mere ambiguity of language; we
cannot repose on the passage.
In 1476 a legal process and inquest was held as to the descendants of
the brother of the mother of Jeanne d’Arc, named Voulton or Vouthon.
Among other witnesses was Henry de Voulton, called Perinet, a carpenter,
aged fifty-two. He was grandson of the brother of the mother of Jeanne
d’Arc, his grand-maternal aunt. This witness declared that he had often
seen the two brothers du Lys, Jehan and Pierre, with their sister, La
Pucelle, come to the village of Sermaise and feast with his father. They
always accepted him, the witness, as their cousin, ‘in all places where
he has been, conversed, eaten, and drunk in their company.’ Now Perinet
is clearly speaking of his associations with Jeanne and her brothers
AFTER HE HIMSELF WAS A MAN GROWN. Born in 1424, he was only five years
old when the Maid left Domremy for ever. He cannot mean that, as a child
of five, he was always, in various places, drinking with the Maid and
her brothers. Indeed, he says, taking a distinction, that in his early
childhood--‘son jeune aage’--he visited the family of d’Arc, with his
father, at Domremy, and saw the Maid, qui pour lors estoit jeune fille.*
*De Bouteiller et de Braux, Nouvelles Recherches sur la Famille de
Jeanne d’Arc, Paris, 1879, pp. 8, 9.
Moreover, the next witness, the cure of Sermaise, aged fifty-three, says
that, twenty-four years ago (in 1452), a young woman dressed as a man,
calling herself Jeanne la Pucelle, used to come to Sermaise, and that,
as he heard, she was the near kinswoman of all the Voultons, ‘and he saw
her make great and joyous cheer with them while she was at Sermaise.’*
Clearly it was about this time, in or before 1452, that Perinet himself
was conversant with Jehan and Pierre du Lys, and with their sister,
calling herself La Pucelle.
*Op. cit. p. 11.
Again, Jehan le Montigueue, aged about seventy, deposed that, in 1449,
a woman calling herself Jeanne la Pucelle came to Sermaise and feasted
with the Voultons, as also did (but he does not say at the same time)
the Maid’s brother, Jehan du Lys.* Jehan du Lys could, at least, if he
did not accept her, have warned his cousins, the Voultons, against their
pretended kinswoman, the false Pucelle. But for some three years at
least she came, a welcome guest, to Sermaise, matched herself against
the cure at tennis, and told him that he might now say that he had
played against la Pucelle de France. This news gave him the greatest
pleasure.
*Op. cit. pp. 4,5, MM. de Bouteiller and de Graux do not observe the
remarkable nature of this evidence, as regards the BROTHERS of the Maid;
see their Preface, p. xxx.
Jehan Guillaume, aged seventy-six, had seen both the self-styled Pucelle
and the real Maid’s brothers at the house of the Voultons. He did not
know whether she was the true Maid or not.
It is certain, practically, that this PUCELLE, so merry at Sermaise with
the brothers and cousins of the Maid, was the Jeanne des Armoises of
1436-1439. The du Lys family could not successively adopt TWO impostors
as their sister! Again, the woman of circ. 1449-1452 is not a younger
sister of Jeanne, who in 1429 had no sister living, though one,
Catherine, whom she dearly loved, was dead.
We have now had glimpses of the impostor from 1436 to 1440, when
she seems to have been publicly exposed (though the statement of the
Bourgeois de Paris is certainly that of a prejudiced writer), and again
we have found the impostor accepted by the paternal and maternal kin
of the Maid, about 1449-1452. In 1452 the preliminary steps towards
the Rehabilitation of the true Maid began, ending triumphantly in 1456.
Probably the families of Voulton and du Lys now, after the trial
began in 1452, found their jolly tennis-playing sister and cousin
inconvenient. She reappears, NOT at Sermaise, in 1457. In that year King
Rene (father of Margaret, wife of our Henry VI.) gives a remission to
‘Jeanne de Sermaises.’ M. Lecoy de la March, in his ‘Roi Rene’ (1875)
made this discovery, and took ‘Jeanne de Sermaises’ for our old friend,
‘Jeanne des Ermaises,’ or ‘des Armoises.’ She was accused of ‘having
LONG called herself Jeanne la Pucelle, and deceived many persons who had
seen Jeanne at the siege of Orleans.’ She has lain in prison, but is let
out, in February 1457, on a five years’ ticket of leave, so to speak,
‘provided she bear herself honestly in dress, and in other matters, as a
woman should do.’
Probably, though ‘at present the wife of Jean Douillet,’ this Jeanne
still wore male costume, hence the reference to bearing herself
‘honestly in dress.’ She acknowledges nothing, merely says that the
charge of imposture lui a ete impose, and that she has not been actainte
d’aucun autre vilain cas.* At this date Jeanne cruised about Anjou and
the town of Saumur. And here, at the age of forty-five, if she was
of the same age as the true Maid, we lose sight for ever of this
extraordinary woman. Of course, if she was the genuine Maid, the career
of La Pucelle de France ends most ignobly. The idea ‘was nuts’ (as the
Elizabethans said) to a good anti-clerical Frenchman, M. Lesigne, who,
in 1889, published ‘La Fin d’une Legende.’ There would be no chance of
canonising a Pucelle who was twice married and lived a life of frolic.
*Lecoy de la Marche, Le Roi Rene, ii. 281-283, 1875.
A more serious and discreet scholar, M. Gaston Save, in 1893, made an
effort to prove that Jeanne was not burned at Rouen.* He supposed that
the Duchess of Bedford let Jeanne out of prison and bribed the two
priests, Massieu and Ladvenu, who accompanied the Maid to the scaffold,
to pretend that they had been with her, not with a substituted victim.
This victim went with hidden face to the scaffold, le visage embronche,
says Percival de Cagny, a retainer of Jeanne’s ‘beau duc,’ d’Alencon.**
The townspeople were kept apart by 800 English soldiers.*** The Madame
de Luxembourg who entertained the impostor at Arlon (1436) was ‘perhaps’
the same as she who entertained the real Jeanne at Beaurevoir in 1430.
Unluckily THAT lady died in November 1430!
*Jehanne des Armoises, Pucelle d’Orleans, Nancy, 1893.
**Quicherat, iv. 36.
***Quicherat, ii. 14, 19.
However, the Madame de Luxembourg who entertained the impostor was aunt,
by marriage, of the Duke of Burgundy, the true Maid’s enemy, and she
had means of being absolutely well informed, so the case remains very
strange. Strange, too, it is that, in the records of payment of pension
to the true Maid’s mother, from the town of Orleans, she is ‘mere de la
Pucelle’ till 1452, when she becomes ‘mere de feue la Pucelle,’ ‘mother
of the LATE Pucelle.’ That is to say, the family and the town of Orleans
recognised the impostor till, in 1452, the Trial of Rehabilitation
began. So I have inferred, as regards the family, from the record of the
inquest of 1476, which, though it suited the argument of M. Save, was
unknown to him.
His brochure distressed the faithful. The Abbe, Dr. Jangen, editor of
‘Le Pretre,’ wrote anxiously to M. P. Lanery d’Arc, who replied in a
tract already cited (1894). But M. Lanery d’Arc did not demolish the
sounder parts of the argument of M. Save, and he knew nothing of the
inquest of 1476, or said nothing. Then arose M. Lefevre Pontalis.*
Admitting the merits of M. Save’s other works, he noted many errors in
this tract. For example, the fire at Rouen was raked (as we saw) more
or less (admodum) clear of the dead body of the martyr. But would it
be easy, in the circumstances, to recognise a charred corpse? The two
Mesdames de Luxembourg were distinguished apart, as by Quicherat. The
Vignier documents as to Robert des Armoises were said to be impostures.
Quicherat, however, throws no doubt on the deed of sale by Jehanne and
her husband, des Armoises, in November 1436. Many errors in dates were
exposed. The difficulty about the impostor’s reception in Orleans,
was recognised, and it is, of course, THE difficulty. M. Lefevre de
Pontalis, however, urges that her brothers are not said to have been
with her, ‘and there is not a trace of their persistence in their
error after the first months of the imposture.’ But we have traces, nay
proofs, in the inquest of 1476. The inference of M. Save from the fact
that the Pucelle is never styled ‘the late Pucelle,’ in the Orleans
accounts, till 1452, is merely declared ‘inadmissible.’ The fact, on the
other hand, is highly significant. In 1452 the impostor was recognised
by the family; but in that year began the Trial of Rehabilitation, and
we hear no more of her among the du Lys and the Voultons. M. Lefevre
Pontalis merely mentions the inquest of 1476, saying that the impostor
of Sermaise (1449-1452) may perhaps have been another impostor, not
Jeanne des Armoises. The family of the Maid was not capable, surely, of
accepting TWO impostors, ‘one down, the other come on’! This is utterly
incredible.
*Le Moyen Age, June 1895.
In brief, the family of Jeanne, in 1436,1449-1452, were revelling with
Jeanne des Armoises, accepting her, some as sister, some as cousin. In
1439 the Town Council of Orleans not only gave many presents of wine and
meat to the same woman, recognising her as their saviour in the siege of
1429, but also gave her 210 livres. Now, on February 7, 1430, the town
of Orleans had refused to give 100 crowns, at Jeanne’s request, to
Heliote, daughter of her Scottish painter, ‘Heuves Polnoir.’* They said
that they could not afford the money. They were not the people to give
210 livres to a self-styled Pucelle without examining her personally.
Moreover, the impostor supped, in August 1439, with Jehan Luillier, who,
in June, 1429, had supplied the true Maid with cloth, a present from
Charles d’Orleans. He was in Orleans during the siege of 1429, and gave
evidence as to the actions of the Maid at the trial in 1456.** This man
clearly did not detect or expose the impostor, she was again welcomed
at Orleans six weeks after he supped with her. These facts must not be
overlooked, and they have never been explained. So there we leave the
most surprising and baffling of historical mysteries. It is, of course,
an obvious conjecture that, in 1436, Jehan and Pierre du Lys may have
pretended to recognise the impostor, in hopes of honour and rewards such
as they had already received through their connection with the Maid.
But, if the impostor was unmasked in 1440, there was no more to be got
in that way.*** While the nature of the arts of the False Pucelle is
inscrutable, the evidence as to the heroic death of the True Maid is
copious and deeply moving. There is absolutely no room for doubt that
she won the martyr’s crown at Rouen.
*Quicherat, v. 155.
**Quicherat, v. pp. 112,113,331, iii. p. 23.
***By 1452 Pierre du Lys had un grand hotel opposite the Ile des
Boeufs, at Orleans, given to him for two lives, by Charles d’Orleans,
in 1443. He was also building a town house in Orleans, and the
chevalier Pierre was no snob, for he brought from Sermaise his
carpenter kinsman, Perinet de Voulton, to superintend the erection.
Nouvelles Recherches, pp. 19, 20.
V. JUNIUS AND LORD LYTTELTON’S GHOST
‘Sir,’ said Dr. Johnson, ‘it is the most extraordinary thing that has
happened in my day.’
The most extraordinary thing that had happened in Dr. Johnson’s day was
the ‘warning’ to the noble peer generally spoken of as ‘the wicked Lord
Lyttelton.’ The Doctor went on thus: ‘I heard it with my own ears from
his uncle, Lord Westcote. I am so glad to have every evidence of the
spiritual world that I am willing to believe it.’ Dr. Adams replied,
‘You have evidence enough--good evidence, which needs no support.’ Dr.
Johnson growled out, ‘I like to have more!’
Thus the Doctor was willing to believe what it suited him to believe,
even though he had the tale at third or fourth hand; for Lord Westcote
was not with the wicked Lord Lyttelton at the time of his death, on
November 27, 1779. Dr. Johnson’s observations were made on June 12,
1784.
To Lord Westcote’s narrative we shall return.
As a study in Russian scandal, and the growth and development of
stories, this anecdote of Lord Lyttelton deserves attention. So first we
must glance at the previous history of the hero. Thomas Lord Lyttelton
was born, says Mr. Coulton (in the ‘Quarterly Review,’ No. 179, p. 111),
on January 30, 1744.* He was educated at Eton, where Dr. Barnard thought
his boyish promise even superior to that of Charles James Fox. His
sketches of scenery in Scotland reminded Mrs. Montagu of the vigour of
Salvator Rosa, combined with the grace of Claude Lorraine! At the age
of nineteen, already affianced to Miss Warburton, he went on the Grand
Tour, and excelled the ordinary model of young debauchery abroad. Mr.
James Boswell found a Circe at Siena, Lyttelton found Circes everywhere.
He returned to England in 1765; and that learned lady, Mrs. Carter, the
translator of Epictetus, ‘admired his talents and elegant manners,
as much as she detested his vices.’ In 1768 he entered the House of
Commons, and, in his maiden speech, implored the Assembly to believe
that America was more important than Mr. Wilkes (and Liberty). Unseated
for bribery in January 1769, he vanished from the public view, more
or less, for a season; at least he is rarely mentioned in memoirs, and
Coulton thinks that young Lyttelton was now engaged--in what does the
reader suppose? In writing ‘The Letters of Junius’!**
*The writer was not Croker, but Mr. Coulton, ‘a Kentish gentleman,’
says Lockhart, February 7, 1851, to his daughter Charlotte.
**If
Lyttelton went to Italy on being ejected from Parliament, as Mr. Rigg
says he did in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography,’ Coulton’s theory
will be hard to justify.
He was clever enough; his rank was like that assumed as his own by
Junius; his eloquence (as he proved later in the House of Lords) was
vituperative enough; he shared some of Junius’s hatreds, while he
proclaimed, like Junius, that the country was going to the dogs. Just as
Junius was ending his Letters, the prodigal, Thomas Lyttelton, returned
to his father’s house; and Chatham wrote to congratulate the parent
(February 15, 1772). On May 12, 1772, Junius published his last letter
in ‘The Public Advertiser;’ and on June 26 Mr. Lyttelton married a
widow, a Mrs. Peach. He soon left his wife, and was abroad (with a
barmaid) when his father died in 1773. In January 1774 he took his seat
in the Lords. Though Fox thought him a bad man, his first speech was in
favour of securing to authors a perpetual copyright in their own works.
He repeated his arguments some months later; so authors, at least, have
reason for judging him charitably.
Mr. Carlyle would have admired Lyttelton. His politics (at one juncture)
were ‘The Dictatorship for Lord Chatham’! How does this agree with the
sentiments of Junius? In 1767-69 Junius had exhausted on Chatham his
considerable treasury of insult. He is ‘a lunatic brandishing a crutch,’
‘so black a villain,’ ‘an abandoned profligate,’ and he exhibits ‘THE
UPSTART INSOLENCE OF A DICTATOR!’ This goes not well with Lyttelton’s
sentiments in 1774. True, but by that date (iii. 305) Junius himself had
discovered ‘that if this country can be saved, it must be saved by Lord
Chatham’s spirit, by Lord Chatham’s abilities.’ Lyttelton and Junius
are assuredly both of them ruffianly, scandal-loving, inconsistent, and
patrician in the manner of Catiline. So far, the likeness is close.
About America Lyttelton wavered. On the whole, he recognised the need
of fighting; and his main idea was that, as fight we must, we should
organise our forces well, and fight with our heads as well as with our
hands. He disdained the policy of the ostrich. The Americans were in
active rebellion; it could not be blinked. He praised Chatham while
he opposed him. He was ‘fighting for his own hand.’ Ministers felt the
advantage of his aid; they knew his unscrupulous versatility, and in
November 1775 bought Lyttelton with a lucrative sinecure--the post
of Chief Justice of Eyre beyond the Trent. Coulton calls the place
‘honourable;’ we take another view. Lyttelton was bought and sold, but
no one deemed Lyttelton a person of scrupulous conscience.
The public prospects darkened, folly was heaped on folly, blunder on
blunder, defeat on defeat. On April 24, 1779, Horace Walpole says that
Lord Lyttelton ‘has again turned against the Court on obtaining the
Seals’ * November 25, 1779, saw Lyttelton go boldly into Opposition.
He reviewed the whole state of the empire. He poured out a torrent of
invective. As to his sinecure, he said, ‘Perhaps he might not keep it
long.’ ‘The noble Lords smile at what I say!’
*Is this a slip, or misprint, for ‘on NOT obtaining the Seals’?
They need not have smiled. He spoke on Thursday, November 25; on
Saturday, November 27, the place in Eyre was vacant, and Lord Lyttelton
was a dead man.
The reader will keep in mind these dates. On Thursday, November 25,
1779, the first day of the session, Lyttelton overflows in a volcanic
speech against the Court. He announces that his place may soon be
vacant. At midnight on November 27 he is dead.
On all this, and on the story of the ghostly ‘warning’ to Lord
Lyttelton, delivered in the night of Wednesday, November 24, Coulton
builds a political romance. In his view, Lyttelton, expelled from
Parliament, lavished his genius and exuded his spleen in the ‘Letters
of Junius.’ Taking his seat in the Lords, he fights for his own hand, is
bought and muzzled, wrenches off his muzzle, blazes into a fierce attack
on the wrongs which he is weary of witnessing, the hypocrisy which he
is tired of sharing, makes his will, sets his house in order, plays
one last practical joke by inventing the story of the ghostly warning,
surrounds himself with dissolute company, and at midnight on November 27
deliberately fulfils his own prediction, and dies by his own hand. It
is a tale creditable to Coulton’s fancy. A patrician of genius, a wit,
a profligate, in fatigue and despair, closes his career with a fierce
harangue, a sacrilegious jest, a debauch, and a draught of poison,
leaving to Dr. Johnson a proof of ‘the spiritual world,’ and to mankind
the double mystery of Junius and of the Ghost.
As to the identity of Junius, remembering the warning of Lord
Beaconsfield, ‘If you wish to be a bore, take up the “Letters of
Junius,”’ we shall drop that enigma; but as to the alleged suicide of
Lord Lyttelton, we think we can make that seem extremely improbable.
Let us return to the course of events, as stated by Coulton and by
contemporaries.
The warning of death in three days, says Coulton, occurred (place not
given) on the night of November 24, 1779. He observes: ‘It is certain
that, on the morning after that very day’ (November 25), ‘Lord Lyttelton
had related, not to one person alone, but to several, and all of them
people of credit, the particulars of a strange vision which he said had
appeared to him the preceding night.’ On Thursday, the 25th, as we saw,
he spoke in the Lords. On Friday, the 26th, he went down to his house
at Epsom, Pitt Place, where his party, says Coulton, consisted of Mr.
(later Lord) Fortescue, Captain (later Admiral) Wolsley, Mrs. Flood, and
the Misses Amphlett. Now, the town had no kind of doubt concerning the
nature of Lord Lyttelton’s relations with two, if not three, of the
Misses Amphlett. His character was nearly as bad, where women were
concerned, as that of Colonel Charteris. But Walpole, writing to Mann
on November 28 (the day after Lord Lyttelton’s death), says: ‘Lord
Lyttelton is dead suddenly. SUDDENLY, in this country, is always at
first construed to mean BY A PISTOL... The story given out is, that he
looked ill, AND HAD SAID HE SHOULD NOT LIVE THREE DAYS; that, however,
he had gone to his house at Epsom... with a caravan of nymphs; and on
Saturday night had retired before supper to take rhubarb, returned,
supped heartily, went into the next room again, and died in an instant.’
Nothing here of a dream or ghost. We only hear of a prophecy, by
Lyttelton, of his death.
Writing to Mason on Monday, November 29, Walpole avers that Lord
Lyttelton was ‘attended only by four virgins, whom he had picked up in
the Strand.’ Here Horace, though writing from Berkeley Square, within
two days of the fatal 27th, is wrong. Lord Lyttelton had the Misses
Amphlett, Captain Wolsley, Mr. Fortescue, and Mrs. Flood with him.
According to Walpole, he felt unwell on Saturday night (the 27th),
‘went to bed, rung his bell in ten minutes, and in one minute after the
arrival of his servant expired!’ ‘He had said on Thursday that he should
die in three days, HAD DREAMT SO, and felt that it would be so. On
Saturday he said, “If I outlive to-day, I shall go on;” but enough of
him.’
Walpole speaks of a DREAM, but he soon has other, if not better,
information. Writing to Mason on December 11, he says that ghost stories
from the north will now be welcome. ‘Lord Lyttelton’s vision has revived
the taste; though it seems a little odd that an APPARITION should
despair of getting access to his Lordship’s bed, in the shape of a young
woman, without being forced to use the disguise of a robin-redbreast.’
What was an apprehension or prophecy has become a dream, and the dream
has become an apparition of a robin-redbreast and a young woman.
If this excite suspicion, let us hasten to add that we have
undesigned evidence to Lord Lyttelton’s belief that he had beheld an
APPARITION--evidence a day earlier than the day of his death. Mrs.
Piozzi (then Mrs. Thrale), in her diary of Sunday, November 28, writes:
‘Yesterday a lady from Wales dropped in and said that she had been at
Drury Lane on Friday night. “How,” I asked, “were you entertained?”
“Very strangely indeed! Not with the play, though, but the discourse of
a Captain Ascough, who averred that a friend of his, Lord Lyttelton, has
SEEN A SPIRIT, who has warned him that he will die in three days. I have
thought of nothing else since.”’
Next day, November 29, Mrs. Piozzi heard of Lord Lyttelton’s death.*
*Notes and Queries. Series V., vol. ii. p. 508. December 26,1874.
Here is proof absolute that the story, with apparition, if not with
robin, was current THE DAY BEFORE LORD LYTTELTON’S DECEASE.
Of what did Lord Lyttelton die?
‘According to one of the papers,’ says Coulton, vaguely, ‘the cause
of death was disease of the heart.’ A brief ‘convulsion’ is distinctly
mentioned, whence Coulton concludes that the disease was NOT cardiac. On
December 7, Mason writes to Walpole from York: ‘Suppose Lord Lyttelton
had recovered the breaking of his blood-vessel!’
Was a broken blood-vessel the cause of death? or have we here, as is
probable, a mere inference of Mason’s?
Coulton’s account is meant to lead up to his theory of suicide. Lord
Lyttelton mentioned his apprehension of death ‘somewhat ostentatiously,
we think.’ According to Coulton, at 10 P.M. on Saturday, Lord Lyttelton,
looking at his watch, said: ‘Should I live two hours longer, I shall
jockey the ghost.’ Coulton thinks that it would have been ‘more natural’
for him to await the fatal hour of midnight ‘in gay company’ than to
go to bed before twelve. He finishes the tale thus: Lord Lyttelton was
taking rhubarb in his bedroom; he sent his valet for a spoon, and the
man, returning, found him ‘on the point of dissolution.’
‘His family maintained a guarded and perhaps judicious silence on the
subject,’ yet Lord Westcote spoke of it to Dr. Johnson, and wrote an
account of it, and so did Lord Lyttelton’s widow; while Wraxall, as we
shall see, says that the Dowager Lady Lyttelton painted a picture of the
‘warning’ in 1780.
Harping on suicide, Coulton quotes Scott’s statement in ‘Letters
on Demonology:’ ‘Of late it has been said, and PUBLISHED, that the
unfortunate nobleman had determined to take poison.’ Sir Walter gives
no authority, and Coulton admits that he knows of none. Gloomy but
commonplace reflections in the so-called ‘Letters’ of Lyttelton do not
even raise a presumption in favour of suicide, which, in these very
Letters, Lyttelton says that he cannot defend by argument.* That
Lyttelton made his will ‘a few weeks before his death,’ providing
for his fair victims, may be accounted for, as we shall see, by the
threatening state of his health, without any notion of self-destruction.
Walpole, in his three letters, only speaks of ‘a pistol’ as the common
construction of ‘sudden death;’ and that remark occurs before he has
heard any details. He rises from a mere statement of Lord Lyttelton’s,
that he is ‘to die in three days,’ to a ‘dream’ containing that
assurance, and thence to apparitions of a young woman and a
robin-redbreast. The appearance of that bird, by the way, is, in the
folk-lore of Surrey, an omen of death. Walpole was in a position to know
all current gossip, and so was Mrs. Piozzi.
*Coulton’s argument requires him to postulate the authenticity of
many, at least, of these Letters, which were given to the world by the
author of ‘Doctor Syntax.’
We now turn to a narrative nearly contemporary, that written out by Lord
Westcote on February 13, 1780. Lord Westcote examined the eldest Miss
Amphlett, Captain (later Admiral) Charles Wolsley, Mrs. Flood, Lord
Lyttelton’s valet, Faulkner, and Stuckey, the servant in whose arms, so
to speak, Lord Lyttelton died. Stuckey was questioned (note this) in
the presence of Captain Wolsley and of MR. FORTESCUE. The late Lord
Lyttelton permitted the Westcote narrative to be published in ‘Notes
and Queries’ (November 21, 1874). The story, which so much pleased Dr.
Johnson, runs thus:--On Thursday, November 25, Mrs. Flood and the three
Misses Amphlett were residing at Lord Lyttelton’s house in Hill Street,
Berkeley Square. Who IS this Mrs. Flood? Frederick Flood (1741-1824)
married LADY Julia Annesley in 1782. The wif
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