Days and weeks went by and no exchange came. Although, as he had refused to desert in Ireland, he was not affected by the order which forbade the exchange of the other Irish officers upon any terms, Parliament had no intention of allowing so valuable an officer to get back to the royal camp. In vain Daniel O'Neill urged the King to procure his release for service in Ireland. Charles seems to have done his best. Clarendon says that many attempts were made to exchange him; that one was we know. Care, however, seems to have been taken by his would-be employers not only that these attempts should be unsuccessful, but that Monk should not even hear of them. The wretched colonel thought himself forgotten. His money was gone, and a penniless prisoner in those days was the most miserable of men. Of his annuity fifty pounds was all he had had, and on November 6th, but four months after his committal, he sat down to write an urgent appeal to his brother for another fifty. The letter concludes with a pathetic cry for his release: "I shall entreat you," he says, "to be mindful of me concerning my exchange, for I doubt all my friends have forgotten me. I earnestly entreat you, therefore, if it lies in your power, to remember me concerning my liberty; and so in haste, I rest, your faithful brother, GEORGE MONK." In haste and in the Tower! But any excuse was good enough with the taciturn soldier if it saved words. And he might have saved them all. Exchange and remittance were alike out of the question with his hard-pressed brother, and as the weary months went by he thought himself indeed deserted. Once out of the very depth of his poverty Charles sent him a hundred pounds--an extraordinary mark of esteem as things went at Oxford then. But that was all. Bitterly he felt the seeming ingratitude, but in spite of all with obstinate loyalty he refused to desert his colours, and sat himself down to forget in the pursuit of literature the fancied wrongs under which he smarted.