Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey (23 December 1621 – 12 October 1678) was an English magistrate whose mysterious death caused anti-Catholic uproar in England.

He studied at Westminster School and at Christ Church, Oxford[1] and after entering Gray's Inn became a prominent wood[1] and coal merchant.

He became justice of the peace for Westminster and received a knighthood in September 1666 for his services during the Great Plague of 1665[1] when he had stayed in his post regardless of the circumstances.

In 1669 Godfrey was briefly imprisoned for a few days because he had the King's physician, Sir Alexander Fraizer, arrested for owing him money.

[1] Samuel Pepys' diary of 26 May 1669 mentions that he went on hunger strike, claiming that the Judges had found for him, but the King, Charles II, had overridden them.

He lived with a maid named Elizabeth Curtis and his secretary, Henry More and a housekeeper, who were questioned at his inquest, where they gave evidence that in their opinion his death was suicide.

In a letter to the Secretary of State, Sir Joseph Williamson, the Lieutenant of the Tower of London named Godfrey as a member of the so-called "Peyton Gang".

This had been founded by Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury after he had become aware of the Secret Treaty of Dover in which Charles II agreed to convert himself and England to Roman Catholicism in return for money paid by the French King Louis XIV.

Peyton hand-picked twelve men (including himself and Godfrey) who plotted to replace the King with a republic, nominally led by Richard Cromwell.

Titus Oates and Israel Tonge appeared before Godfrey and asked him to take their oath that the papers they presented as evidence were based on truth.

Godfrey had supposedly been concerned that he might be one of the victims of the scare, but he took no extra precautions for his own security; his conversation also became increasingly strange, with references to martyrdom and to being "knocked on the head" (the contemporary phrase for assassination).

Bedloe claimed that Catholic plotters had killed Godfrey in order to steal his papers about the depositions (note that the witnesses whose words had been recorded were still alive).

The King, who was increasingly sceptical about the reality of the Plot, burst out laughing at the notion, pointing out that Belasyse was so afflicted with gout that he could hardly stand up.

Prance named as the actual killers three working men, Robert Green, Henry Berry and Lawrence Hill, who were arrested.

[5]: 304 Prance later recanted his confession before the king and the council and was thrown back to prison: he was threatened with torture, and nearly froze to death.

Because the three men were executed on false evidence, and historians accept their complete innocence, the murder remains officially unsolved.

The circumstances of Godfrey's death were established and documented by two doctors, Zachariah Skillard and Nicholas Cambridge, for an inquest held at the White House tavern in Primrose Hill.

[5]: 306 American mystery writer John Dickson Carr analyzed all of these theories in The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey (1936), exposing their weak points and contradictions.

He concluded that Philip Herbert, 7th Earl of Pembroke had taken revenge on Godfrey, who had prosecuted him that April for the murder of Nathaniel Cony.

On the other hand, in her biography King Charles II (1979), Antonia Fraser argues that "this would have been an elaborate, even over-elaborate, way of going about things",[8] and that there "is no proof that such a concealment ever took place".

[8] She suggests instead that murder "was the obvious plausible explanation, either by random muggers taking advantage of Godfrey's night walk, or by any one of the enemies a magistrate can acquire in the exercise of his profession",[8] while conceding that "no one theory ... seems able to explain all the known facts.