Then he again appeared in parliament, and took a leading part in the movement in opposition to the crown, and inveighed in bitter terms against the bribery of persons in power by the East India Company, and the venality of many members of parliament and even the ministry.

His relations with the king were now of the coldest kind, and he became mixed up in a Jacobite plot.

How far he was guilty in the matter was never proved.
Public opinion certainly condemned him, and by a vote of the peers he was deprived of all his employments and sent to the Tower.

The king, however, stood his friend, and released him at the end of the session.
In 1697, by the death of his uncle, Charles became Earl of Peterborough, and passed the next four years in private life, emerging only occasionally to go down to the House of Peers and make fiery onslaughts upon abuses and corruption.

In the course of these years, both in parliament and at court, he had been sometimes the friend, sometimes the opponent of Marlborough; but he had the good fortune to be a favorite of the duchess, and when the time came that a leader was required for the proposed expedition to Spain, she exerted herself so effectually that she procured his nomination.
Hitherto his life had been a strange one.