The government might indeed have postponed the trials till the new Act came into force; and it would have been wise, as well as right, to do so; for the prisoners would have gained nothing by the delay.  The case against them was one on which all the ingenuity of the Inns of Court could have made no impression.  Porter, Pendergrass, De la Rue and others gave evidence which admitted of no answer.  Charnock said the very little that he had to say with readiness and presence of mind.  The jury found all the defendants guilty.  It is not much to the honour of that age that the announcement of the verdict was received with loud huzzas by the crowd which surrounded the Courthouse.  Those huzzas were renewed when the three unhappy men, having heard their doom, were brought forth under a guard.676

Charnock had hitherto shown no sign of flinching; but when he was again in his cell his fortitude gave way.  He begged hard for mercy.  He would be content, he said, to pass the rest of his days in an easy confinement.  He asked only for his life.  In return for his life, he promised to discover all that he knew of the schemes of the Jacobites against the government.  If it should appear that he prevaricated or that he suppressed any thing, he was willing to undergo the utmost rigour of the law.  This offer produced much excitement, and some difference of opinion, among the councillors of William.  But the King decided, as in such cases he seldom failed to decide, wisely and magnanimously.  He saw that the discovery of the Assassination Plot had changed the whole posture of affairs.  His throne, lately tottering, was fixed on an immovable basis.  His popularity had risen impetuously to as great a height as when he was on his march from Torbay to London.  Many who had been out of humour with his administration, and who had, in their spleen, held some communication with Saint Germains, were shocked to find that they had been, in some sense, leagued with murderers.  He would not drive such persons to despair.  He would not even put them to the blush.  Not only should they not be punished; they should not undergo the humiliation of being pardoned.  He would not know that they had offended.  Charnock was left to his fate.677 When he found that he had no chance of being received as a deserter, he assumed the dignity of a martyr, and played his part resolutely to the close.  That he might bid farewell to the world with a better grace, he ordered a fine new coat to be hanged in, and was very particular on his last day about the powdering and curling of his wig.678 Just before he was turned off, he delivered to the Sheriffs a paper in which he avowed that he had conspired against the life of the Prince of Orange, but solemnly denied that James had given any commission authorising assassination.  The denial was doubtless literally correct; but Charnock did not deny, and assuredly could not with truth have denied, that he had seen a commission written and signed by James, and containing words which might without any violence be construed, and which were, by all to whom they were shown, actually construed, to authorise the murderous ambuscade of Turnham Green.