When it is considered that the former of these trials was conducted by Lord Chief Justice Hale, the most famous and according to all testimony the most moderate judge of his time, it becomes brilliantly clear that it was not only by incompetent judges, as the nature of the cases makes it clear that it was not only in political trials, that unsound evidence was accepted as genuine, but that the common knowledge of the times did not discriminate in any appreciable manner between evidence which is, and that which ought not to be, sufficient to procure the conviction of prisoners. Without adornment the fact is that evidence which to modern ears is bad, to those of judges and juries of the seventeenth century seemed perfectly good.[585] One further point of similarity between the evidence given at witch trials and at trials for the Plot may be noted. Credence was given to flimsy tales of the devil and his practices, if not solely, at least all the more readily because such ideas were current in the popular mind, and scarcely more than a hint was needed for their embodiment as concrete facts. The same may be said of the revelations of the Popish Plot. For years men had expected nothing more certainly and had feared nothing more keenly than a great onslaught of Catholicism upon their own religion. What they now heard seemed only a just realisation of their prophecies. “They had,” says Bishop Parker, “so familiarly accustomed themselves to these monstrous lies, that at the first opening of Oates’ Plot they with a ready and easy credulity received all his fictions; for whatsoever he published, they had long before expected.”[586]