[Oldham, John]
Garnets Ghosts, Adressing to the Jesuits, met in private Caball, just after the MURTHER of Sir Edmund-Bury Godfrey. [London, 1679]. Folio, later leather-backed marbled boards; pp. 4 (last with tape restoration). First printing, later published in Four Satyrs upon the Jesuits.
The work plays upon contemporary fears of a Popish plot, as fuelled by the self-described informer Titus Oates. Godfrey was the magistrate chosen by Oates to take possession of his papers, supposedly describing a Catholic plot to kill Charles II. After taking Oates and Israel Tonge's depositions Godfrey became erratic and paranoid. He became convinced he would be assassinated. Unlike other paranoids, he was indeed killed in one of England's most enduring unsolved crimes. Godfrey would be found dead in a ditch on 17th October 1678. He had been strangled, and his neck broken, before his dead body was impaled with Godfrey's own sword. He had died 4-5 days before he was found. Oates used the murder to further his own anti-Catholic agenda - three men would be executed on the dubious confession of a Catholic servant of the Queen - but its generally believed the three were innocent. Whatever the cause of his death, his ghost was a convenient dramatic figure, appearing to various Catholic figures (including the Earl of Danby and the Pope) in service of the anti-Catholic hysteria which Godfrey's murder engendered.
ESTC R32248, Wing O235
With The True Protestant Lettany, [1680]. An anti-Catholic poem inspired by the same fervour which surrounded Godfrey's death. [2]