he had borne a great part in the Revolution, that he had made four voyages to Holland in the evil times, that he had since refused great places, that he had always held lucre in contempt.  “I,” he said, turning significantly to Nottingham, “have bought no great estate; I have built no palace; I am twenty thousand pounds poorer than when I entered public life.  My old hereditary mansion is ready to fall about my ears.  Who that remembers what I have done and suffered for His Majesty will believe that I would speak disrespectfully of him?” He solemnly declared,—­and this was the most serious of the many serious faults of his long and unquiet life,—­that he had nothing to do with the papers which had caused so much scandal.  The Papists, he said, hated him; they had laid a scheme to ruin him; his ungrateful kinswoman had consented to be their implement, and had requited the strenuous efforts which he had made in defence of her honour by trying to blast his.  When he concluded there was a long silence.  He asked whether their Lordships wished him to withdraw.  Then Leeds, to whom he had once professed a strong attachment, but whom he had deserted with characteristic inconstancy and assailed with characteristic petulance, seized the opportunity of revenging himself.  “It is quite unnecessary,” the shrewd old statesman said, “that the noble Earl should withdraw at present.  The question which we have now to decide is merely whether these papers do or do not deserve our censure.  Who wrote them is a question which may be considered hereafter.”  It was then moved and unanimously resolved that the papers were scandalous, and that the author had been guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour.  Monmouth himself was, by these dexterous tactics, forced to join in condemning his own compositions.775 Then the House proceeded to consider the charge against him.  The character of his cousin the Duchess did not stand high; but her testimony was confirmed both by direct and by circumstantial evidence.  Her husband said, with sour pleasantry, that he gave entire faith to what she had deposed.  “My Lord Monmouth thought her good enough to be wife to me; and, if she is good enough to be wife to me, I am sure that she is good enough to be a witness against him.”  In a House of near eighty peers only eight or ten seemed inclined to show any favour to Monmouth.  He was pronounced guilty of the act of which he had, in the most solemn manner, protested that he was innocent; he was sent to the Tower; he was turned out of all his places; and his name was struck out of the Council Book.776 It might well have been thought that the ruin of his fame and of his fortunes was irreparable.  But there was about his nature an elasticity which nothing could subdue.  In his prison, indeed, he was as violent as a falcon just caged, and would, if he had been long detained, have died of mere impatience.  His only solace was to contrive wild and romantic schemes for extricating himself from his difficulties