Fate for once favored him; a half-contemptuous desire to do something
for this out-at-elbows Kentish squire who had certainly been a loyal
adherent of the Commonwealth, caused my Lord Protector to favor his
application. The rich daughter of the Marquis of Dover was placed under
the guardianship of Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse with an allowance of
£4,000 a year for her maintenance, until she came of age. A handsome
fortune and stroke of good luck for a wise and prudent man:--a drop in
an ocean of debts, difficulties and expensive tastes, in the case of Sir
Marmaduke.

A prolonged visit to London with a view either of gaining a foothold in
the new Court, or of drawing the attention of the malcontents, of Monk
and his party, or even of the Royalists, to himself, resulted in further
debts, in more mortgages, more bitter disappointments.

The man himself did not please. His personality was unsympathetic; Lady
Sue's money which he now lavished right and left, bought neither
friendship nor confidence. He joined all the secret clubs which in
defiance of Cromwell's rigid laws against betting and gambling, were the
resort of all the smart gentlemen in the town. Ill-luck at hazard and
dice pursued him: he was a bad loser, quarrelsome and surly. His
ambition had not taught him the salutary lesson of how to make friends
in order to attain his desires.

His second return to the ancestral home was scarcely less disastrous
than the first; a mortgage on his revenues as guardian of Lady Sue
Aldmarshe just saved him this time from the pursuit of his creditors,
and this mortgage he had only obtained through false statements as to
his ward's age.