In the wake of the
Popish Plot,
Miles Prance, a
silversmith with close connections to the Court, was arrested and imprisoned on suspicion of complicity. In prison, he was put in chains, denied a fire to the point of almost freezing to death, and threatened with
torture. Upon being examined about the murder of Sir
Edmund Berry Godfrey, Prance swore that Godden and his servant Lawrence Hill had been concerned in the crime, and that Godfrey's corpse had been concealed for a time in Godden's apartments. Prance could suggest no plausible motive for the crime, merely saying vaguely that Godden had taken the side of two Irish priests, Kelly and Fitzgerald, in a quarrel with Godfrey, and that the quarrel for no clear reason led to murder. Kelly, of whom nothing is known, may have been a figment of Prance's imagination, although Godden and Hill did know an Irish priest called Fitzgerald, who was employed in the household of the
Venetian envoy. Godden, concerned that he would not receive a fair trial due to popular anti-Catholic sentiment, fled to Paris. His lodgings in
Somerset House were searched, although they were too small to conceal a body. Several witnesses, including Godden's niece Mary Tylden, swore at the trial that Hill was elsewhere at the time of the murder, and Hill's wife accused Prance of perjury, saying that "he knows all of this is as false as God is true" and predicting that he would recant when it was too late. Hill was, nevertheless, executed at
Tyburn on 21 February 1679, alongside his supposed co-conspirators Henry Green and Robert Berry. ==Later years==