Mr. L’Estrange’s reasoning, being only conjectural, and very improbable, is therefore far from conclusive:  It is certain that there never was a more intricate affair than this.  We have read the trials of all those who suffered for this murther, chiefly upon the evidence of one Prance, and one Bedloe, who pretended to have been accomplices; but their relation is so inconsistent; their characters so very infamous, and their reward for being evidences supposed to be so considerable, that the most candid enquirer after truth, can determine nothing positively concerning it.  All who suffered for the popish plot, denied their knowledge of it; the four men who were executed, as being the perpetrators persisted to the last in protesting their innocence of it.  After all, the murther of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey is perhaps one of those secrets, which will ever remain so, till the hearts of all men are laid open.

The services, which Mr. L’Estrange rendered the court, procured him the honour of knighthood; and he served as a member for Winchester, in the parliament called by king James the IId. 1685.  But things taking quite a different turn in that prince’s reign, in point of liberty of conscience, to what most people expected, our author’s Observators were dropt, as not being suitable to the times.  However he continued licenser of the press ’till the accession of the prince of Orange to the throne; in whose reign, on account of his Tory principles, and his attachment to his late master, he met with some troubles.  He was suffered however to descend to the grave in peace, though he had in a manner survived his understanding.  He died December 12, 1705, in the 88th year of his age.

[D]Besides his Observators, which make three volumes in folio, he published a great number of poetical and other works.  Winstanley, in his Lives of the Poets, says, ’That those who shall consider the number and greatness of his books, will admire he should ever write so many; and those who have read them, considering the skill and method they are written in, will admire he should write so well.  Nor is he less happy in verse than prose, which for elegance of language, and quickness of invention, deservedly entitles him to the honour of a poet.’

The following are the titles of some of his works, viz.  Collections in Defence of the King.  Toleration Discussed.  Relapsed Apostate.  Apology for Protestants.  Richard against Baxter.  Tyranny and Popery.  Growth and Knavery.  Reformed Catholic.  Free-born Subjects.  The Case Put.  Seasonable Memorials.  Answer to the Appeal.  L’Estrange no Papist; in answer to a Libel, intitled L’Estrange a Papist, &c. with Notes and Animadversions upon Miles Prance, Silver-Smith, cum multis aliis.  The Shammer Shamm’d.  Account Cleared.  Reformation Reformed.  Dissenters Sayings, in two Parts.  Notes on Colledge, the Protestant Joiner.  Citizen and Bumpkin, in two Parts.  Further Discovery in the Plot.  Discovery