His fortune was small.

His temper, naturally ungentle, had been exasperated by his domestic vexations, by the public reproaches, and by what he had undergone in the days of the Popish plot.

He had been long a prisoner, and had at length been tried for his life.

Happily for him, he was not put to the bar till the first burst of popular rage had spent itself, and till the credit of the false witnesses had been blown upon.
He had therefore escaped, though very narrowly.

[49] With Castelmaine was allied one of the most favoured of his wife's hundred lovers, Henry Jermyn, whom James had lately created a peer by the title of Lord Dover.
Jermyn had been distinguished more than twenty years before by his vagrant amours and his desperate duels.