Lord Macaulay says ‘he showed such gross ignorance of law and history as brought on him the contempt of all who heard him.’ On going to the home circuit in July, immediately after the trial, he had the indecency, in his charge to the Croydon jury, to speak against the verdict of acquittal in the case of the bishops, and to stigmatise their petition to the King as a libel that tended to sedition. His death, which occurred in the following month on 22 August 1688 at his house in Brownlow Street, Holborn, saved him from the attainder with which he would probably have been visited if he had lived till after the Glorious Revolution. He was buried on 4 September 1688 near the grave of his mother at Dagenham in Essex, where a sumptuous monument was erected to his memory. His wife was Barbara Blakiston, of the family of Sir Francis Blakiston of Gibside, Durham, of the Blakiston baronets