On the evening of 17 October 1678 the body of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, a Westminster Justice of the Peace, was discovered in a ditch near Primrose Hill. He had been pierced with his own sword and apparently strangled. His death lead to a widespread popular hysteria about a "Popish Plot". Although a magistrate famous for his fierce rectitude, Godfrey was closely involved with the alternative healer and "stroker", Valentine Greatrakes and also played a part in many plots and and intrigues centred on the uninhibited court of Charles II and Restoration London. His death brought to a head a series of rumours about Catholic plots to kill Charles II and install his brother, James, Duke of York, on the throne. Identified as the victim of a Jesuit hit-man, Godfrey became overnight a Protestant martyr and cult figure.

On a cold October afternoon in 1678, the Westminster justice of the peace Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey left his home in Charing Cross and never returned. Within hours of his disappearance, London was abuzz with rumours that the magistrate had been murdered by Catholics in retaliation for his investigation into a supposed 'Popish Plot' against the government. Five days later, speculation morphed into a moral panic after Godfrey's body was discovered in a ditch, impaled on his own sword in an apparent clumsily staged suicide. This book presents an anatomy of a conspiratorial crisis that shook the foundations of late Stuart England, eroding public faith in authority and official sources of information. Speculation about Godfrey's death dovetailed with suspicions about secret diplomacy at the court of Charles II, contributing to the emergence of a partisan press and an oppositional political culture in which the most fantastical claims were not only believable but plausible. Ultimately, conspiracy theories implicating the king's principal minister, his queen and his brother in Godfrey's murder stoked the passions and divisions that would culminate in the Exclusion Crisis, the most serious challenge to the British monarchy since the Civil War.ng the king's principal minister, his queen and his brother in Godfrey's murder stoked the passions and divisions that would culminate in the Exclusion Crisis, the most serious challenge to the British monarchy since the Civil War.ng the king's principal minister, his queen and his brother in Godfrey's murder stoked the passions and divisions that would culminate in the Exclusion Crisis, the most serious challenge to the British monarchy since the Civil War.ng the king's principal minister, his queen and his brother in Godfrey's murder stoked the passions and divisions that would culminate in the Exclusion Crisis, the most serious challenge to the British monarchy since the Civil War.

The correspondence included here represents the first selection of Pepys's letters drawn from all possible sources to be published since 1933. Since the Diary does not cover this period, the letters enable the reader to follow Pepys' early career on the staff of the Earl of Sandwich, his rise to greatness as Secretary of the Admiralty, and his retirement after the Glorious Revolution. Along the way Pepys fought battles with opponents of his naval reforms and enemies who tried to implicate him in the Popish Plot, while taking care of his various relatives and keeping up with an array of friends and acquaintances who included many of the great and famous of late-seventeenth-century England. The letters have been chosen to reflect all these aspects of Pepys's varied and fascinating life, and include 30 never before published. They are accompanied by a running commentary, biographies of persons mentioned, a glossary, a chronology, and an introduction that explains how the letters have survived and analyses how they were written.BR>Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and archaeologist with numerous books to his credit. His specialist field is Roman Britain but he has published three books for Boydell on the 'other' seventeenth-century diarist, John Evelyn (1620-1706), including the widely-acclaimed Particular Friends: The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn which features all the letters exchanged by the two men over a period of 38 years.