popery into England, and to promote the interest of the French king in this place”;[590] a fact which Coleman had not even attempted to deny. What Scroggs meant, and what, had he been a better judge, he would have made clear to the prisoner, was that such designs, according to the law which it was his duty to administer as it had been handed down to him, were technically evidence of high treason, whether or no they included an actual plot to kill the king; but he was so much irritated by Coleman’s feeble efforts to say that this was not or ought not to have been so, that he neglected altogether to explain the matter, with the result that when Coleman came up for judgment on the following day he shewed that he was still in the dark about it.[591] Concerning Coleman’s letters a curious point arose at the trial. In opening the evidence for the crown Sergeant Maynard had remarked that the correspondence found at the prisoner’s house extended only “to some part of the year 1675; from 1675 unto 1678 all lies in the dark; we have no certain proof of it, but we apprehend he had intelligence until 1678.”[592] The Chief Justice took the subject up: “Mr. Coleman, I will tell you when you will be apt to gain credit in this matter.... Can mankind be persuaded that you, that had this negotiation in 1674 and 1675, left off just then, at that time when your letters were found according to their dates? Do you believe there was no negotiation after 1675 because we have not found them?” The prisoner replied, “After that time (as I said to the House of Commons) I did give over corresponding. I did offer to take all the oaths and tests in the world that I never had one letter for at least two years; yea (that I may keep myself within compass), I think it was for three or four.”[593] After he had delivered sentence on the next day, Scroggs adjured the condemned man to confess that he had continued to correspond with agents abroad during the last three years. “I am sorry, Mr. Coleman,” he said, “I have not charity enough to believe the words of a dying man; for I will tell you what sticks with me very much: I cannot be persuaded, and nobody can, but that your correspondence and negotiations did continue longer than the letters that we have found, that is, after 1675.” “Upon the words of a dying man and the expectation I have of salvation,” was Coleman’s answer, “I tell your lordship that there is not a book or a paper in the world that I have laid aside voluntarily.” Scroggs urged that he might have burnt them. “Not by the living God,” returned the prisoner.[594] Coleman lied. The correspondence which he carried on with Paris and Rome, even in the fragmentary state in which it has been preserved, extended beyond the end of the year 1675. Between December in that year and December 1676 he received fifty letters from St. Germain at Paris, and a letter from the same quarter, dated October 5, 1678, was seized on delivery after Coleman’s arrest.