rehended. To deny the reality of the plot was to be
an accomplice: to hesitate was criminal: royalist, republican;
churchman, sectary; courtier, patriot; all parties concurred in the
illusion. The city prepared for its defence as if the enemy were at its
gates: the chains and posts were put up: and it was a noted saying at
that time of Sir Thomas Player, the chamberlain, that, were it not for
these precautions, all the citizens might rise next morning with their
throats cut.[*]

In order to propagate the popular frenzy, several artifices were
employed. The dead body of Godfrey was carried into the city, attended
by vast multitudes. It was publicly exposed in the streets, and viewed
by all ranks of men; and every one who saw it went away inflamed, as
well by the mutual contagion of sentiments, as by the dismal spectacle
itself. The funeral pomp was celebrated with great parade. The corpse
was conducted through the chief streets of the city: seventy-two
clergymen marched before: above a thousand persons of distinction
followed after: and at the funeral sermon, two able-bodied divines
mounted the pulpit, and stood on each side o. the preacher, lest in
paying the last duties to this unhappy magistrate, he should, before the
whole people, be murdered by the Papists,[**]

* North, p. 206.

**North p. 205.

In this disposition of the nation, reason could no more be heard than
a whisper in the midst of the most violent hurricane. Even at present,
Godfrey's murder can scarcely, upon any system, be rationally
accounted for. That he was assassinated by the Catholics, seems utterly
improbable. These religionists could not be engaged to commit that crime
from policy, in order to deter other magistrates from acting against
them. Godfrey's fate was nowise capable of producing that effect,
unless it were publicly known that the Catholics were his murderers;
an opinion which, it was easy to foresee, must prove the ruin of their
party. Besides, how many magistrates, during more than a century, had
acted in the most violent manner against the Catholics, without its
being ever suspected that any one had been cut off by assassination?
Such jealous times as the present were surely ill fitted for beginning
these dangerous experiments. Shall we therefore say, that the Catholics
were pushed on, not by policy, but by blind revenge, against Godfrey?
But Godfrey had given them little or no occasion of offence in taking
Oates's evide