Miles Prance

Miles Prance (fl. 1678) was an English Roman Catholic craftsman who was caught up in and perjured himself during the Popish Plot and the resulting anti-Catholic hysteria in London during the reign of Charles II.

Prance was born on the Isle of Ely, the son of a Roman Catholic, and he rose quickly from humble origins as an apprentice goldsmith to servant-in-ordinary to Catherine of Braganza, Charles II's queen. He was married with a family, living in Covent Garden at the time of his arrest.

Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey died in October 1678; he disappeared from his home and was found dead at Primrose Hill, having apparently been strangled and run through with a sword some days before his death. Godfrey, though normally tolerant in religious matters, had been militating against the Jesuits around the time of the Popish Plot. Prance was known to be a Roman Catholic and suspicion fell upon him for the death, even though it was thought by many to be suicide.

Prance unwisely drew attention to himself by attending one of the Popish Plot trials, and then publicly defending the accused as "very honest men". William Bedloe, a notorious confidence trickster and later a Popish Plot accuser, investigated Prance's movements during the relevant period and interrogated one John Wren, Prance's Protestant lodger who owed him rent. Wren stated that Prance had been out of the house on the night of the murder (this was later found to be untrue, although another Protestant lodger in Prance's house, Joseph Hale, told the same story). Bedloe, with the assistance of Wren and Hale, evidently decided to enhance his public standing as a "discoverer" of the Plot by denouncing Prance, who as a Catholic of rather humble social background, without influential friends to protect him, was particularly vulnerable to such an accusation.

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