This was a consistent story, which was supported in some circumstances by collateral proofs; and yet when he came before the King and Council he denied all he had sworn, and said it was a mere fiction; but when he was carried back to prison, he said all was true again, and that the horror and confusion he was in made him deny it. Thus he continued saying and unsaying for several times; but at last he persisted in his first attestation, and by this and what Bedloe brought in evidence against them, Green, Hill, and Berry were found guilty and condemned. Green and Hill died, as they had lived, Papists, and with solemn protestations denied the whole thing; but Berry declared himself a Protestant, though he had personated a Papist for bread, for which dissimulation he thought this judgment had befallen him. But he denied what was charged against him, and to the last minute declared himself altogether innocent; and his dying a Protestant and yet denying all that was sworn against him, was a triumph to the Papists, and gave them an opportunity to say that it was not the doctrine of equivocation, nor the power of absolution, but merely the force of conviction that made those of their religion do the same. The Lord Chief Justice at this time was Sir William Scroggs, a man more valued for a good readiness in speaking well than either learning in his profession or any moral virtue. His life had been indecently scandalous, and his fortune very low; and it was a melancholy thing to see so bad, so ignorant and so poor a man raised up to that high post. Yet now, seeing how the stream ran, he went into it with so much zeal and heartiness that he became the people's favourite and strove in all trials even with an indecent earnestness to get the prisoners convicted. But their resolute manner of dying and protestations of innocence to the last began to make impression on people's minds, and impair the credit both of the judge and witnesses, till one Jennison, the younger brother of a Jesuit, and a gentleman of family and estate, but now turned Protestant, came in, as it were, to their relief; for in contradiction to what Ireland died affirming, _i.e._ that he was in Staffordshire at the time that Oates swore he was in London, he wrote a letter to a friend attesting that he was in company with Ireland on the 19th of August, and had much familiar talk with him, so that his dying affirmations were false. The letter was printed, and this use was made of it to vacate the truth of those denials wherewith so many ended their lives. But what afterwards destroyed the credit of the letter was the solemn protestation that the author made, as he desired forgiveness of his sins and hoped for the salvation of his soul, that he knew nothing of the plot; and yet the summer after he published a long narrative, wherein he said that himself was invited to assist in the murder of the King, and named the four ruffians who went to Windsor to do it.