There they were lodged in separate prisons and interrogated. Around twenty other men were also imprisoned or interrogated, though not charged with treason as the ringleaders eventually were. As the authorities were eager to discover if any gentry were involved in the conspiracy, the use of torture was authorised, and Coke pursued the charges with extreme aggression, despite the misgivings of several judges regarding his interpretation of the statutes. Coke appears to have based his arguments on defective knowledge of a riot that took place on May Day 1517, the so-called "Evil May Day". Steer in his defiant testimony claimed that he "stood in no need" himself, but "meant to have risen to help his poor friends, and other poor people in misery". Despite the charge of treason, on the terms of the 1571 statute, being "shaky" at best, the men were tried before an Oxfordshire jury including several men who had been personally threatened by the plot. Steer and James Bradshaw were both absent from 24 February arraignment, suggesting they had died in prison in the meantime. Two plotters, Burton and Richard Bradshaw, were convicted on the treason charge and eventually executed on Enslow Hill, within sight of the enclosures they had wished to remove. The fate of Bompass is unclear, though it is possible he also died in prison. Though the trials themselves and executions passed unrecorded at the time, the convictions for treason of Burton and Bradshaw were used by Coke in the trial of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex to support his prosecution. In a more positive outcome of the 'rising', Parliament subsequently passed an Act halting further enclosures.