At the bar of the King’s Bench, Mary Tilden stepped forward to maintain that Laurence Hill returned home every evening before eight o’clock. The judge inquired when her family had departed from London. She answered: in October. Tilden then corrected herself, saying she had mistaken the month. Mrs Broadstreet next took the stand to confirm that their absence dated back to September. This detail proved neither that Hill had gone abroad nor that he had kept his chamber. Yet, in a trial wherein hours and itineraries were meant to bind three men to a murder, a single displaced month was enough to breach an alibi.
The indictment laid the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey on 12 October 1678. It alleged that Robert Green cast a linen handkerchief about his neck and strangled him, while Henry Berry, Laurence Hill, and diverse others stood by to aid and abet. Green, Berry, and Hill pleaded not guilty. The proceedings opened on 10 February 1678 according to the English calendar then in use, wherein the year turned in the spring: February 1679 by modern reckoning. The October date belonged to the prosecution; the arguments concerned the manner of Godfrey’s death, but also who had dogged his steps and who had seen him.
Before Praunce recounted the night in question, the court heard those who testified that Godfrey had gone in fear of his life. Oates declared he had sworn certain informations before him, after which Godfrey spoke of reproaches and menaces proceeding from great Catholic personages. Thomas Robinson, who had known him these forty years, recalled a dinner after the Westminster sessions: Godfrey had remarked that he might well be “the first martyr,” yet affirmed he would not suffer himself to be slain without a struggle. These words were related by witnesses; they did not identify the prisoners at the bar, nor did they establish, of themselves, a motive.
The central evidence came from Praunce, who described himself as one of the actors. He swore he had met Green, Girald, and Kelly at the Plough alehouse; Hill was said to have attended a second gathering. According to his telling, Girald and Kelly maintained there would be no sin in killing Godfrey, but rather a charitable act, forasmuch as he worked great mischief against their cause. Praunce insisted they had agreed that whoever chanced upon the justice should give warning to the rest. For the prisoners, this narrative placed their lives in the hands of a self-avowed accomplice.
Praunce then related how the company had supposedly watched for Godfrey. Hill or Green—Praunce faltered as to whether it were one or both—had told him of going to Godfrey’s house, and thence dogging him through London. Towards seven of the clock, Green allegedly gave Praunce notice that Godfrey was near St Clement’s, watched by Girald and Kelly. Hill, it was said, waited by a gate and drew the magistrate aside under colour of parting two men in a pretended fray, appealing to his authority as a justice of the peace. By this account, Green cast his handkerchief about his neck behind the rails of Somerset House. Praunce stated he kept watch at the water-gate; Berry, at the stairs. He did not claim to have witnessed the first blows.
He affirmed that he arrived shortly after and found Godfrey yet alive. He imputed to Green the final acts that brought about his death, then described the body being carried between Hill’s chamber and diverse rooms of Somerset House. At one juncture, he could no longer recall in which room the corpse had been laid. Sir Robert Southwell, Clerk of the Council, testified that Praunce had at first led the searchers directly to certain places, but afterwards hesitated when required to point out a chamber wherein he claimed to have seen the body. Southwell noted further that one of the rooms so named could not have been that of Sir John Arundell. The uncertainty thus touched not merely the hour, but the very path along which the witness made the dead man travel.
Bedloe offered a second narrative of the events following the murder, without pretending to have been present at the deed. He said he had been approached by priests, had recognised Godfrey in a dark room at Somerset House, and had advised that the corpse be cast into the river. According to him, those present refused, declaring they would cause it to be taken for a suicide. Praunce spoke of a removal in a sedan-chair; Bedloe said he had viewed the body in a lodging, yet named neither the same actors nor the same hours at each stage. Bedloe added that he had recognised Praunce among the men assembled about the body. Yet Praunce maintained he had never been in Bedloe’s company prior to his imprisonment.
Constable Brown described what he found in a ditch: a sword thrust through the body, but no blood upon the earth. The surgeons stated that the neck was distorted and the breast bruised. Skillard believed one wound ran through the heart, yet doubted it had been the cause of death, for the apparel was unstained and no blood had issued forth. Cambridge likewise deemed that the sword-thrusts might have been dealt after death. These examinations established the wounds they observed; they did not confirm Praunce’s narrative, stroke for stroke.
The memories of the house and the precincts of Somerset House became, in their turn, bitterly contested proofs. Elizabeth Curtis, Godfrey’s maid, remembered that Green had come inquiring for her master, and that Hill had seen him the following morning. Tilden insisted that Hill ever came home before eight, and was within doors that night. Lee said he had never missed him within at such hours, though he acknowledged he had not kept constant watch upon him. Others—Gray, How, Cutler, and Lazinhy—placed him in their company at diverse times, either working upon a house he was repairing or at dinner. None of these depositions covered the whole of the alleged night without break. Warrier, a landlord, placed Hill at his house on 12 October, from half past seven until after ten. His wife explained how they had traced the date in an almanac: the Saturday a fortnight after Michaelmas. The judge remarked that such a reckoning brought the date to 19 October. Warrier nevertheless maintained they spoke of the selfsame day.
Berry called the sentries from the great gate of Somerset House for the night of Wednesday, 16 October, the time of the alleged removal. Corporal Collet set forth the reliefs: Trollop from seven till ten, Wright from ten till one. Wright saw no sedan-chair go out. Trollop saw one enter, which was set down within; he swore he never stirred from his post, no, not the length of a pike. Berry protested that the gate could not have been opened without the sentry seeing it. A judge retorted that he might have opened it himself. Yet the opening would still have been visible, answered the prisoner.
Praunce’s credit had been challenged from the moment of his examination. Before the trial, he had made a confession, and afterwards declared to the King and Council that both he and the others were innocent. Captain Richardson testified that following this recantation, Praunce begged him to return to the King and say his denial was false, that he had spoken out of fear, and that his first story was true. In open court, Praunce confirmed this testimony upon oath. Hill urged that a man who had confessed to lying ought not to be received as a witness. The judge replied that the recantation itself had not been made upon oath. His testimony remained admissible. At the close of the pleadings, Hill’s wife asked whether Praunce had not been tortured to wring his confession from him. Praunce denied it. She then cried out against the usage of her husband’s witnesses: they had been daunted, she said, and the court had made game of them.
Counsel for the Crown ascribed the murder to the religious zeal of its perpetrators. His colleague urged that there was no proof Praunce had been suborned. The prisoners contested the dates, the places, and the worth of a testimony that had shifted. The Lord Chief Justice summed up the Crown’s evidence at great length; the record preserved by Borrow notes that he scarcely touched upon that of the defence, which he deemed weak or impossible. Against the sentries, he set the whole body of inculpatory proof: they might be mistaken, he insinuated, or not honest. The jury withdrew and brought in Green, Berry, and Hill guilty.
On the morrow, the three men were brought again to the bar to receive judgment. A tipstaff had already seized their coats for his fees; the court ordered that they be restored. They protested their innocence and prayed that their kinsfolk might be suffered to visit them. This was granted, but not the attendance of Catholic priests. The judge pronounced sentence of death by hanging. The titles of contemporary tracts, preserved in the entries of the EEBO catalogue, distinguish the executions: Green and Hill on 21 February 1679, Berry on the 28th. Their voices fell silent a week apart. At trial, they had opposed to the accusations guarded gates, a lodging too frequented to conceal a corpse, and hours for which every witness was called to account.