Wakeman case, accusing him at the same time of several other misdemeanours on the bench, including a habit of excessive drinking and foul language (the charge of heavy drinking at least was probably true enough). In January 1680 the case was argued before the Council and Scroggs was acquitted. Scroggs repeated the attacks he had made on Oates' credibility at Wakeman's trial, and the King expressed his full confidence in him. 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, calling him "a notorious villain ... he was in Chelmsford gaol", 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 the King now felt secure enough to dispense with his services, and in April Scroggs, much it seems to his own surprise, was removed from the bench, although with a generous pension. He retired to his country home at South Weald in Essex; he also had a townhouse at Chancery Lane in London, where he died on 25 October 1683. Family Scroggs married Anne Fettyplace (d. 1689), daughter of Edmund Fettyplace of Berkshire: they had four children: Sir William Scroggs junior (died 1695), who like his father was a barrister Mary (died 1675) Anne (died 1713), who married as his third wife Sir Robert Wright, who like her father became Lord Chief Justice of England but died in prison after the Glorious Revolution Elizabeth (died 1724), who married firstly Anthony Gylby and secondly Charles Hatton, younger son of Christopher Hatton, 1st Baron Hatton. Scroggs' opinion of his wife, and of women in general, may perhaps be inferred from an irritable remark he made at the trial for treason of the barrister Richard Langhorne in 1679. Despite objections from William Bedloe, Scroggs permitted female observers like Mary, Lady Worcester to take notes of the evidence, on the ground that "a woman's notes will not signify, truly - no more than her tongue." On the other hand, at Wakeman's