Apart from politics his life at Dalkeith was pleasant enough. In the short intervals of relaxation from business he devoted himself to planting, gardening, and hunting, of which he was passionately fond. He was a man of strong domestic affections, and they grew with advancing years. On the whole his family life was happy. His wife was possessed of many good qualities. She was devoted to him, and in spite of her sharp tongue he was very fond of her. The loss of his baby son George was a great and lasting grief, but Christopher, his first-born, was left. Daughters he had none, but Mary Monk, the eldest girl of his favourite brother, had come to stay with him, and even now he was in correspondence with her father about her marriage and the dowry he was going to provide. But however attractive grew the prospect of a quiet life in Ireland far away from the din of politics, retirement was now out of the question. On July 5th, 1659, he found it his duty to write the following warning to the Council of State: "I make bold to acquaint you that I hear that Charles Stuart hath laid a great design both in England and Ireland, but as yet I hear nothing that he hath written over to this country concerning that business. I am confident that if he had I should have heard of it." By a strange irony almost as he penned the words his cousin, Sir John Grenville, was in consultation with Lord Mordaunt as to the best method of making the general a party to their design. It was the widespread conspiracy for a simultaneous rising of the King's friends in every county of which the vigilant governor had heard. Fortified with a new commission from the King, Mordaunt and his beautiful and courageous young wife had succeeded in hatching a really fine plot in concert with the more energetic members of the Sealed Knot. King and Cavaliers were to be kept in the background, and those constitutional Royalists, who as far as possible had never been in arms for the Crown, were to rise for a free Parliament and "the known laws of the land."