This must remain a mere hypothesis. I may recall that, according to the teaching of many Jesuit theologians, the assassination of a man in order to prevent grave harm to the Church was not a crime, but a laudable act. But many others, besides the Jesuits, would be interested in taking drastic measures to ensure the position of the Duke of York, nor is it more than a conjecture that Godfrey learned of the meeting. It is possible that this meeting was by no means an innocent "congregation" of Jesuits to discuss their affairs; and it is just as possible that the real cause of the murder has never yet occurred to us. It remains one of the numerous unsolved problems in the story of the Jesuits.
The remaining years of the reign of Charles II. were years of suffering for the Jesuits. They continued to enter the country in disguise and minister to the fiercely persecuted Catholics. We learn that in 1682 the Province counted 295 members, and that in 1685 they had no less than 102 priests working in England. In those harsh times they endured the worst rigours of an apostolic life. Whether or no they were innocent of murder, many Catholics felt that their presence in England was inflammatory and their conduct indiscreet, and familiar houses were closed against them. Several of them died from the privations which they had to suffer. But an ardent and steady hope fired them to meet their perils and sufferings, and in the first week of February 1685 the news rang through the stricken and scattered ranks that Charles was dead and a devoted Catholic about to ascend the throne of England.
The historian who realises that this was to be the last chance which the fates would offer to the Catholic Church of obtaining power and majority in England reads the story of those three years of triumph and ineptitude with strange reflections. Never was a great opportunity more tragically wasted. The overwhelming majority of the nation, the officials, and the Parliament were not merely Protestant, but feverishly vigilant and intensely suspicious of the Jesuits. It was a time for infinite patience and restrained diplomacy, and, so far as we can ascertain, the Vatican itself, and Cardinal Howard who advised the Papacy at Rome, fully realised the need. But the Jesuits were in command, and they gave the most flagrant exhibition in their annals of the unwisdom and mischief of their distinctive methods. Although a Protestant prince grimly smiled on their blunders in Holland, and his agents in England eagerly magnified every indiscretion, they proceeded with the most imprudent defiance of Protestant feeling. Within two years they were spreading schools and churches over London, talking of the speedy capture of the universities and the magistracy, and placing one of their own number among the Privy Councillors. And in less than four years James II. was flying ignominiously for France, with the Jesuits in his train.