land. He took his seat in the court of king's bench for the first time on 18 June 1678 (Hatton Correspondence, Camden Soc. Publ. new ser. xxii. 162). He was summoned to the assistance of the House of Commons on 24 Oct., while Oates was detailing his lying narrative of the ‘popish plot.’ In reply to the speaker Scroggs said that he would use his best endeavours, ‘for he feared the face of noe man where his king and countrie were concerned,’ and, withdrawing into the speaker's chamber, ‘he tooke informations upon oath, and sent out his warrants’ (Autobiography of Sir John Bramston, Camden Soc. p. 179; see also Journals of the House of Commons, ix. 521; Journals of the House of Lords, xiii. 301).
The first victim of the ‘popish plot’ was William Stayley, who was tried in the king's bench by Scroggs for treasonable words against the king on 21 Nov. Scroggs repeatedly put questions to the prisoner in order to intimidate and confuse him, and, when the verdict of guilty was pronounced, brutally exclaimed, ‘Now you may die a Roman catholic, and when you come to die, I doubt you will be found a priest too’ (Cobbett, State Trials, vi. 1501–12). Edward Coleman, the next victim, was tried before Scroggs in the king's bench, for high treason, on 27 Nov. Oates and Bedloe were the chief witnesses against the prisoner, and Scroggs in his summing up had the indecency to declare that ‘no man of understanding but for by-ends would have left his religion to be a papist’ (ib. vii. 1–78). At the trial of William Ireland, Thomas Pickering, and John Grove, for high treason, at the Old Bailey on 17 Dec., though it was clear that the testimony of Oates and his associates was perjured, Scroggs insisted that ‘it is most plain the plot is discovered, and that by these men; and that it is a plot and a villainous one nothing is plainer.’ In summing up the evidence Scroggs said: ‘This is a religion that quite unhinges all piety, all morality … They eat their God, they kill their king, and saint the murderer.’ When the three prisoners were found guilty, Scroggs, turning to the jury, said: ‘You have done, gentlemen, like very good subjects and very good Christians—that is to say, like very good protestants—and now much good may their thirty thousand masses do them’ (ib. vii. 79–144). On 10 Feb. 1679 Scroggs presided at the trial of Robert Green, Henry Berry, and Laurence Hill, in the king's bench, for the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey. He made a violent harangue against popery, declared his implicit belief in Prance's story, and expressed his ‘great satisfaction that you are, every one of you, guilty’ (ib. vii. 159–230). On the following day Samuel Atkins, a servant of Samuel Pepys, was tried before Scroggs in the king's bench as an accessory before the fact of Godfrey's murder. Atkins, however, established an alibi to the satisfaction of Scroggs, who declared that the prisoner appeared ‘to be a very innocent man in this matter’ (ib. vii. 231–50). The next victims of the ‘popish plot’ were five jesuit priests—Thomas Whitebread, William Harcourt, John Fenwick, John Gavan, and Anthony Turner. They were tried for high treason before Scroggs at the Old Bailey on 13 June. Fenwick and Whitebread had been previously tried for high treason, along with Ireland, Pickering, and Grove, but Scroggs had discharged the jury of them, as there was only one witness against them. Though Whitebread urged that no man could be put in jeopardy of his life the second time for the same cause, the objection was overruled by the court. In his summing up Scroggs declared that Dugdale's evidence gave him ‘the greatest satisfaction of anything in the world in this matter,’ and, turning to the prisoners, exclaimed, ‘Let any man judge by your principles and practices what you will not do for the promoting of the same’ (ib. vii. 311–418). On the following day he presided at the trial of Richard Langhorne at the Old Bailey for high treason. Though Langhorne produced several witnesses to disprove the evidence of Oates, Scroggs felt bound by his conscience to remind the jury that ‘the profession, the doctrines, and the discipline of the church of Rome is such that it does take away a great part of the faith that should be given to these witnesses.’ The jury found Langhorne guilty, and he was sentenced to death with the five jesuits who had been tried on the previous day (ib. vii. 417–90).
On 18 July Sir George Wakeman, William Marshal, William Rumley, and James Corker were tried at the Old Bailey before Scroggs for high treason. On this occasion Scroggs disparaged the testimony of Oates and Bedloe, and implored the jury ‘not to be so amazed and frightened with the noise of plots as to take away any man's life without any reasonable evidence.’ Bedloe had the impudence to complain that his evidence was ‘not right summed up’ by Scroggs, but the jury, taking their cue from the chief justice, brought in a verdict of not guilty (ib. vii. 591–688). By this sudden change of front Scroggs at once lost all the popularity which he had gained by his brutal zeal for the protestant cause. Oates and Bedloe were furious, and he was assailed on every side by broad-
