In July he appeared in his place
in the House of Lords, as 'brisk as ever,' and sat in his robes,
'which,' says Pepys, 'is a monstrous thing that a man should be
proclaimed against, and put in the Tower, and released without any
trial, and yet not restored to his places.'
We next find the duke intrusted with a mission to France, in concert
with Halifax and Arlington. In the year 1680, he was threatened with an
impeachment, in which, with his usual skill, he managed to exculpate
himself by blaming Lord Arlington. The House of Commons passed a vote
for his removal; and he entered the ranks of the opposition.
But this career of public meanness and private profligacy was drawing to
a close. Alcibiades no longer--his frame wasted by vice--his spirits
broken by pecuniary difficulties--Buckingham's importance visibly sank
away. 'He remained, at last,' to borrow the words of Hume, 'as incapable
of doing hurt as he had ever been little desirous of doing good to
mankind.' His fortune had now dwindled down to L300 a year in land; he
sold Wallingford House, and removed into the City.
And now the fruits of his adversity, not, we hope, too late, began to
appear. Like Lord Rochester, who had ordered all his immoral works to be
burnt, Buckingham now wished to retrieve the past.
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