Andrea McKenzie’s “Conspiracy Culture in Stuart England: The Mysterious Death of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey” seeks to unravel the enduring murder mystery of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey’s death which has fascinated historians and the public for over three hundred years and spawned numerous conspiracies ever since he was found in a ditch run through with his own sword in October 1678. Sir Godfrey was a respected, knighted, Justice of the Peace for Whitehall, who just prior to his death, had taken several witness statements while investigating the allegations of the “notorious perjurer” Titus Oates who baselessly claimed to have infiltrated the Jesuits and obtained inside information on an impending Catholic conspiracy — the “Popish Plot.” (1) Oates together with William Bedloe, falsely claimed that Jesuits plotted with English Catholics to organize a diabolical plot to kill King Charles II, massacre thousands of English Protestants, burn London (again!),[1] place his brother and heir, James the Duke of York on the throne, and impose Catholicism and French absolute rule on Britian. (1-2, 33-36) In the febrile religious and political environment of the Restoration, Oates’s allegations were widely believed, even by some Catholics, and regrettably unleased a hysterical moral panic that led to a crackdown on Catholics and the unfortunate judicial murder of dozens of Catholics and the imprisonment of many others.
McKenzie’s book at times reads like a detailed true crime murder mystery – a genre which ironically was emerging in England at this time. Each chapter focuses on a potential suspect or group of suspects and explores the forensic evidence, testimony of witnesses, political environment, and motives of various people suspected by contemporaries in often elaborate conspiracy theories to have committed the crime. In chapter three, she examines evidence regarding whether Sir Godfrey’s death was a suicide, as alleged by royal propogandist Roger L’Estrange in his “Brief History,” published in 1688. Some modern historians such as Alan Marshall have promoted a variant of L’Estrange’s suicide theory arguing Sir Godfrey’s suicide was “covered up and staged by the family” to protect their estate. (8) McKenzie rejects these suicide arguments. She also explores whether Godfrey’s death was murder disguised as a suicide by a Jesuit and Catholic cabal designed to protect the “usual suspects” of Catholic conspirators behind the Popish Plot, a theory that was widely believed at the time; or a “false flag” operation launched by the ambitious and unscrupulous Earl of Danby, Charles II’s chief minister, designed to protect his position at court; or a murder directed by the Duke of Buckingham to protect what Sir Godfrey intimated was a “horrible secret” revealed to Godfrey shortly before his death. (51)
McKenzie’s detailed history is far more than a whodunit that seeks to solve a complex murder mystery.[2] Rather, McKenzie’s history explores issues of moral panic, mass hysteria, conspiracy theories, and the tendency to “scapegoat marginalized groups” (folk devils), in this instance Catholics, which has resonance with today’s modern politics where we have witnessed the QAnon movement and other conspiracies involving elites. (52) According to McKenzie, the death of Sir Godfrey gave credence to Oates’s wild allegations unleashing latent fears that “plunged the nation into an anti-Papist moral panic,” that brought dozens of Catholics to their deaths “because their religion made the trumped-up charges against them not only plausible, but unanswerable.” (181, 196) Further, Sir Godfrey’s death fueled the “Exclusion Crisis” (1679-81) which dominated British politics beginning in 1679 wherein Parliament sought to exclude the Duke of York from the succession leading to the Glorious Revolution in 1688. (53) These outcomes were possible she convincingly argues because “of the demise of a culture of civility, compromise, and coalition” akin to that experienced in modern American politics. (196) Thus, as she puts it “the aim of this book is not to pass judgment on the judicial mishaps and prejudices of the past but rather to examine the particular circumstances and contexts that gave rise to them.” (4)
Most modern historians have concluded the Papist Plot itself was a deliberate fictional invention by Oates without any factual basis. However, McKenzie astutely argues contemporaries were not “wholly irrational or without evidentiary basis” in grasping at conspiracies in this febrile climate as there were “real” plots and conspiracies afoot involving “secret French diplomacy and crypto-Catholicism at court.” (52) In fact, as rumored at the time, Charles II had entered into the secret Treaty of Dover with Louis XIV in 1670 in which he “promised to declare war on the Dutch and to announce his conversion to Catholicism . . . in exchange for subsidies” which would enable him to avoid calling Parliament for revenue and finance a standing army that many suspected was intended for use against his own subjects rather than in foreign wars. (184, 185) Embarrassing details of this Treaty began to leak as early as 1672. (184)
In addition, Catholic zealot Edward Coleman’s letters, some of which were published at the time, revealed that possibly at the behest of the Duchess of York, for whom he served as secretary, he “had solicited foreign [French] aid to promote both a repeal of the penal laws against recusants [including Catholics] and dissolution of the intolerably Anglican Cavalier Parliament” possibly with the support of the Duke of York. (181, 195) William Lloyd wrote in a cryptic letter, first decrypted by McKenzie, in response to royal propogandist L’Estrange that Coleman had “confided sensitive and ‘horrible secrets’ to Godfrey” that made Godfrey fear for his life. (174) McKenzie argues that Sir Godfrey learned from Edward Coleman “not about Oates’s bogus Popish Plot;” rather, about Coleman’s “admission of complicity in a real plot to use French money to bribe English MPs and other people dissatisfied with Danby’s administration in order to bring about more toleration for Catholics.” (182, 207) Godfrey also learned, possibly from Coleman, that the ardent Protestant Duke of Buckingham also solicited and accepted French bribes. (208) Another potentially dangerous secret known by Godfrey was that the Duke of York had hosted a Jesuit conference at Saint James just before the Popish Plot emerged which could implicate the Duke in the Plot in the public mind. (174)
McKenzie’s analysis complicates the traditional Whiggish historical narrative of the corrupt Charles II and Tories taking French bribes by noting that many Whigs also took French bribes including the Duke of Buckingham. (189, 208) These real plots taken together made Oates’s spurious accusations more believable to contemporaries predisposed to believe and have complicated attempts to resolve the mystery of Sir Godfrey’s death ever since.
McKenzie engages in through archival research and introduces for the first time several letters she decrypted from William Lloyd to L’Estrange. She compares Lloyd’s drafts to the excerpts that appear in his “History” indicating that he was selective and manipulated his evidence in arguing Godfrey had committed suicide. She analyzes a plethora of primary sources including the Lloyd’s letters, the writings of Bishop Gilbert Burnet, letters of the well-informed French ambassador Paul Barillon to Louis XIV, Edward Coleman’s key evidence. McKenzie has thoroughly analyzed “contemporary pamphlets and trial accounts, newsletters, parliamentary records and state papers, journals, memoirs, diaries, and correspondence.” (8)
In the Conclusion, McKenzie finally reveals, after examining in excruciating detail all other potential culprits, whom she believes murdered Sir Godfrey. She hedges but asserts: “it is possible, then, that Buckingham ordered Godfrey’s murder because the magistrate was in possession, through Coleman, of correspondence which implicated the duke in French schemes to bribe the English political opposition.” (219) McKenzie describes Buckingham as having a track record of violence and suffering from “narcissist personality disorder” such that he lacked empathy, was unscrupulous and may have directed “his equally unscrupulous henchman Colonel John Scott” to murder Sir Godfrey. (220)
[1]Many Protestants blamed Jesuits and Catholics for the Great Fire of London of 1666. Id., 20, 197.
[2]Professor McKenzie posted an hour length lecture on her work on YouTube.