‘In happier days of my life, before my spirit had been yet at all lowered by my misfortunes, I should have been disposed to have met such a charge with the contempt which, I trust by this time, your Majesty thinks due to it. I should have been disposed to have defied my enemies to the utmost, and to have scorned to answer to anything but a legal charge before a competent tribunal. But in my present misfortunes such force of mind is gone. I ought, perhaps, so far to be thankful to them for their wholesome lessons of humility. I have therefore entered into this long detail to endeavour to remove at the first possible opportunity any unfavourable impressions, to rescue myself from the dangers which the continuance of these suspicions might occasion, and to preserve to me your Majesty’s good opinion, in whose kindness, hitherto, I have found infinite consolation, and to whose justice, under all circumstances, I can confidently appeal.’ The memorial, however, would have been of very little worth but for the depositions by which it was accompanied. These were sworn to, not by discarded servants, but by men of character--men, that is, of reputation. Thus Captain Manby, on oath, replies to the allegation of Bidgood that he had seen the Captain kiss the Princess of Wales:--‘It is a vile and wicked invention, wholly and absolutely false; it is impossible that he could ever have seen any such thing, as I never upon any occasion, or in any situation, had the presumption to salute her Royal Highness in any such manner, or to take any such liberty as to offer any such insult to her person.’ To Bidgood’s allegation that the Captain’s frequent sleeping in the house was a subject of constant conversation with the servants, Captain Manby again declares upon oath that he never in his life slept in any house anywhere that had ever been occupied by her Royal Highness. ‘Never,’ he adds, ‘did anything pass between her Royal Highness and myself that I should be in any degree unwilling that all the world should have seen.’ This was conclusive; the deposition of Lawrence, the great artist, was not less crushing. In answer to a strongly-worded deposition of Cole, the page, Lawrence declares on oath that during the time he was painting the portrait of the Princess at Montague House he never was alone with her but upon one occasion, and then simply to answer a question put to him at a moment he was about to retire with the rest of the company. Like Captain Manby, he solemnly swears that nothing ever passed between her Royal Highness and himself which he would have the least objection that all the world should see and hear.