*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.