On the following day he was brought before the Council.  The examination was conducted by Nottingham with great humanity and courtesy.  The Bishop, conscious of entire innocence, behaved with temper and firmness.  He made no complaints.  “I submit,” he said, “to the necessities of State in such a time of jealousy and danger as this.”  He was asked whether he had drawn up a Declaration for King James, whether he had held any correspondence with France, whether he had signed any treasonable association, and whether he knew of any such association.  To all these questions he, with perfect truth, answered in the negative, on the word of a Christian and a Bishop.  He was taken back to his deanery.  He remained there in easy confinement during ten days, and then, as nothing tending to criminate him had been discovered, was suffered to return to Bromley.

Meanwhile the false accusers had been devising a new scheme.  Blackhead paid another visit to Bromley, and contrived to take the forged Association out of the place in which he had hid it, and to bring it back to Young.  One of Young’s two wives then carried it to the Secretary’s Office, and told a lie, invented by her husband, to explain how a paper of such importance had come into her hands.  But it was not now so easy to frighten the ministers as it had been a few days before.  The battle of La Hogue had put an end to all apprehensions of invasion.  Nottingham, therefore, instead of sending down a warrant to Bromley, merely wrote to beg that Sprat would call on him at Whitehall.  The summons was promptly obeyed, and the accused prelate was brought face to face with Blackhead before the Council.  Then the truth came out fast.  The Bishop remembered the villanous look and voice of the man who had knelt to ask the episcopal blessing.  The Bishop’s secretary confirmed his master’s assertions.  The false witness soon lost his presence of mind.  His cheeks, always sallow, grew frightfully livid.  His voice, generally loud and coarse, sank into a whisper.  The Privy Councillors saw his confusion, and crossexamined him sharply.  For a time he answered their questions by repeatedly stammering out his original lie in the original words.  At last he found that he had no way of extricating himself but by owning his guilt.  He acknowledged that he had given an untrue account of his visit to Bromley; and, after much prevarication, he related how he had hidden the Association, and how he had removed it from its hiding place, and confessed that he had been set on by Young.

The two accomplices were then confronted.  Young, with unabashed forehead, denied every thing.  He knew nothing about the flowerpots.  “If so,” cried Nottingham and Sidney together, “why did you give such particular directions that the flowerpots at Bromley should be searched?” “I never gave any directions about the flowerpots,” said Young.  Then the whole board broke forth.  “How dare you say so?  We all remember it.”