Statements regarding Jesuit-encouraged plots against Queen Elizabeth were read to the court, as well as some of the plotters' confessions. Garnet defended his use of equivocation with his own treatise on the doctrine. He had denied his conversation with Oldcorne as it was a secret, but said that in matters of faith, equivocation could never be lawful. When asked by Salisbury what he would do if the pope excommunicated King James, he "denied to answer". His defence of equivocation was scorned by Coke, who called it "open and broad lying and forswearing". As for Tesimond's confession, the planned assassination had not at that point happened and so Salisbury said that Garnet could easily have alerted the government. Salisbury attacked the idea that it had ever been made under the seal of the confessional, and claimed anyway that Garnet could have warned the authorities after his more ordinary conversation with Catesby about the death of innocents; the priest replied by saying that at the time, he did not understand the relevance of Catesby's questions. The Earl of Northampton said, in Latin, ""quod non-prohibet cum potest, jubet"" (what a man does not forbid when he can, he orders). Garnet's defence, that he had forbidden Catesby from proceeding, was futile.