Before the crown lawyers opened the direct attack, witnesses were, as usual, produced to testify to the reality of the plot. Prance and Dugdale reaffirmed their previous evidence, and Jennison, himself the brother of a Jesuit, swore that he had met Ireland in London on August 19, 1678, thus proving to the satisfaction of the court that Ireland had died with a lie in his mouth.[694] The prosecution then came to the prisoners. Oates told again the story how he had heard the queen at a meeting at Somerset House consent formally to the plot for murdering the king, and swore that he had seen a letter from Wakeman to the Jesuit Ashby, which was occupied chiefly with a prescription for the latter during his stay at Bath, but mentioned incidentally that the queen had given her approval to the scheme. He had also seen an entry in Langhorn’s register of the payment of £5000 made by Coleman as a third part of Wakeman’s fee and a receipt for it signed by Wakeman himself.[695] Bedloe gave evidence which would prove equally the guilt of the queen and her physician, and both swore to the treasonable practices of the other prisoners.[696] To rebut this, Wakeman produced evidence to prove that he had not written the letter for Ashby himself, but had dictated it to his servant Hunt. The letter was addressed to Chapman, an apothecary at Bath, who read it and then tore off and kept the part containing the prescription. Hunt proved that the letter was in his handwriting and was corroborated by another servant in Wakeman’s household. Chapman proved that the body of the letter was in the same handwriting as the prescription, that it contained nothing about the queen or any plan for the king’s murder, and that Oates had given an entirely inaccurate account of the prescription, which was so far from ordering a milk diet, as Oates had sworn that milk would have been not far removed from poison for a patient who was drinking the waters at Bath. Scroggs was afterwards accused of having grossly favoured the prisoner in order to curry favour at court; but the manner in which this evidence was received is an absolute proof to the contrary. The bench held, in a way that now excites surprise, but at the time did not, that Oates had meant that the milk diet was prescribed for Ashby before he went to Bath, and was therefore not at all inconsistent with drinking the waters while he was there; and that Wakeman might easily have written two letters on the same subject. No doubt, said the judges, the witnesses for the defence spoke the truth. What had happened was that Sir George had dictated one letter, which consisted of nothing but medical directions, and of which the apothecary and the other witnesses spoke; but he must certainly have written another, containing the treasonable words to which Oates swore. The court treated the matter as if this were beyond a doubt. To the prisoner’s objection that he was unlikely to have written two letters to convey the same instructions, Mr.