of Carstares, it is likely enough that he told the truth when he testified that Staley, who was a heavy drinker, had made this threat against the King when he was inebriated, but in less disturbed times Staley could have hoped to escape with a severe reprimand. Scroggs in his summing up did tell the jury that in case of a man's life he would have no regard paid to "the rumours and disorders of the time" but the rest of his charge was wholly in favour of a guilty verdict, which the jury duly brought in without even leaving the box. Staley was hung, drawn and quartered, but as a gesture of clemency, the Government released his body to his family for proper burial. The family unwisely had a series of requiem masses said for his soul, followed by a magnificent funeral at the Anglican St. Paul's Church, Convent Garden. The Government, infuriated, ordered that Staley's body be dug up and quartered, and his head cut off and placed on London Bridge. Edward Colman A week later Edward Colman, former private secretary to the Duke of York, was executed for his allegedly treasonable correspondence with Louis XIV of France. 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 dissolution of Parliament, by bribery if necessary, showed a grave lack of political judgement, but it was straining the law very far to call them treasonable. The correspondence, which had apparently ended in 1674 or 1675, had no effect whatever on English foreign policy, and was of such little importance that Colman, until he was confronted with the letters after his arrest, 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. Scroggs later boasted that he had hanged Colman "against the will of the Court", but in fact, it seems that the King was happy enough to sacrifice Colman, whom he had long regarded as a troublemaker. Berry, Green and Hill At the trial in February 1679 of the prisoners Henry Berry, Robert Green, and Lawrence Hill, accused of the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, Scroggs