As soon as Montagu was free, he published a memoir, explanatory and defensive. It was not so much a denial as an evasion. It was made up of assertions that he had ‘never deviated from the sentiments and conduct of a man of honour;’ that regard ought to be had to ‘the probability of the charges, the rank of the accused, and the character of the prosecutor;’ that he was of ‘distinguished condition,’ and that his accuser was infamous in character and inconsistent in his evidence; that Lord Albemarle, the English ambassador, had told him that he was as convinced of his innocence as he was of his own. Montagu protested that the whole thing was a conspiracy ‘against his Honour and Person,’ at the head of which was the so-called Roberts, whom he had discovered to be a fraudulent bankrupt Jew, Payba by name, who had fled from England to avoid the gallows. Montagu acknowledged that he had invited this ‘infamous bankrupt’ to dinner, but that, instead of winning 120 louis d’ors of him, he had formerly lent that sum to the Jew, who had ‘trumped up this story in order to evade payment.’ He had made the first call on the _soi-disant_ Mr. Roberts, taking him for a man of fashion, and it was the custom for the last comer to make such calls in his neighbourhood, and not to wait to be called upon; and the visit having been returned the invitation to dinner naturally followed. As to playing after dinner, Montagu does not deny it; but he says that the imputation of playing with loaded dice filled him with horror. The conclusion of the so-named defence is that, as the judgment of the court was so completely in favour of Montagu and Taafe, the innocence of those two gentlemen was perfectly established. Before we see if this was exactly the case, let us see what was thought of the affair in England. The public press barely alluded to the scandal, and were not at all grieved at the locking up of a couple of British senators in a French prison. Private individuals noticed the scandal in their letters. In October 1751, Mrs. Montagu wrote to Gilbert West some details of the gambling affair and its consequences. She described the offence of Montagu and Taafe as ‘playing with a Jew at Pharaoh, with too much _finesse_.’