William Scroggs - Lord Chief Justice and The Popish Plot

Lord Chief Justice and The Popish Plot

As Lord Chief Justice Scroggs presided at the trial of the persons denounced by Titus Oates for complicity in the "Popish Plot," and he treated these prisoners with characteristic violence and brutality, overwhelming them with sarcasm and abuse while on their trial, and taunting them when sentencing them to death. So careless was he of the rights of the accused that at one trial he admitted to the jury that he had forgotten much of the evidence. He may at first have been a sincere believer in the existence of the plot along with much of the general public and Parliament, but he did nothing to test the credibility of witnesses like Oates, Bedloe, Prance and Dangerfield, even though he knew well that Bedloe and Dangerfield were leading figures in the criminal underworld.

In November 1678 William Staley, a young Cathlolic banker, was executed for treason in that he had "imagined the King's death". Staley, a heavy drinker, had probably made a threat against the King when drunk, but in less disturbed times could have hoped to escape with a severe reprimand. Scroggs, summing up, did tell the jury that in case of a man's life he would have no regard paid to " the rumours of the time" but the rest of his summing up was wholly in favour of a guilty verdict.

A week later Edward Colman, former private secretary to the Duke of York, was executed for allegedly treasonable correspondence with Louis XIV. Again Scroggs drove hard for a conviction despite Colman's standing as a Government official. Colman's letters in which he urged Louis to press Charles II for a dissolution of Parliament, showed a grave lack of political judgement, but it was straining the law to call them treasonable. The correspondence, which apparently ended in 1674, had no effect on English policy, and was of such little importance that Colman, until confronted with the letters had apparently forgotten writing them. Scroggs told Colman that he had been condemned on his own papers; this was fortunate for the Crown, since the evidence of Oates and Bedloe of overt acts of treason was so feeble that Scroggs in his summing-up simply ignored it.

At the trial in February 1679 of the prisoners Berry, Green, and Hill, accused of the murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey he gave a characteristic exhibition of his methods, indulging in a tirade against the Roman Catholic religion, and loudly proclaiming his belief in the guilt of the accused. When Lawrence Hill's wife boldly accused Miles Prance of perjury in open court, Scroggs said incredulously " You cannot think that he will swear three men out of their lives for nothing?"

It was only when, in July of the same year, Oates's accusation against the Queen's physician, Sir George Wakeman, appeared likely to involve the Queen herself in the ramifications of the plot, that Scroggs began to think matters were going too far; he was probably also influenced by the discovery that the court regarded the plot with discredit and disfavour, and that the country party led by Shaftesbury had less influence than he had supposed with the King. The Chief Justice on this occasion threw doubt on the trustworthiness of Bedloe and Oates as witnesses, and warned the jury to be careful in accepting their evidence. Wakeman and a number of priests who were tried with him were duly acquitted.

This inflamed public opinion against Scroggs, for the popular belief in the plot was still strong. Scroggs continued in his poor treatment of Catholic priests who came before him for trial, as he showed when he sentenced Andrew Bromwich to death at Stafford in the summer of 1679, however his proposing the Duke of York's health at the Lord Mayor's dinner a few months later in the presence of Shaftesbury indicated his determination not to support the Exclusionists against the known wishes of the king .At the opening of the Michaelmas Term he delivered a speech on the need for judicial independence: " the people ought to be pleased with public justice and not justice seek to please the people......justice must flow like a mighty river....neither for my part do I think we live in so corrupted an age that no man can with safety be just and follow his own conscience." Kenyon remarks that whatever Scroggs's faults, this speech shows that he was far more than the " brainless bully" he is sometimes portrayed as.

Acting in the assurance of popular sympathy, Oates and Bedloe now arraigned the Chief Justice before the Privy Council for having discredited their evidence and misdirected the jury in the Wakeman case, accusing him at the same time of several other misdemeanours on the bench, including a habit of excessive drinking and bad language. In January 1680 the case was argued before the Council and Scroggs was acquitted. At the trials of Elizabeth Cellier and of Lord Castlemaine in June of the same year, both of whom were acquitted, he discredited Dangerfield's evidence, and on the former occasion committed the witness to prison. In the same month he discharged the grand jury of Middlesex before the end of term in order to save the Duke of York from indictment as a popish recusant, a proceeding which the House of Commons declared to be illegal, and which was made an article in the impeachment of Scroggs in January 1681. The dissolution of Parliament put an end to the impeachment, but in April Scroggs was removed from the bench with a pension; he died in London on the 25th of October 1683.