Wily councillors before long suggested a way out. He was advised to abandon his original purpose and send in a petition for a “reversionary” Patent for the fisheries. This was only to take effect at the end of Clotworthy’s lease, but for immediate consolation he also prayed for a grant of the rent payable under it to the Crown. The plan was a catching one to recover lost ground, but what reasons could be found to support it? None existed, so Lord Donegall proceeded to invent them. He had to get over the difficulty that Strafford compelled the surrender of 1640 as an act of restitution, and had compensated his father and himself by the grant of an indefeasible Patent for the rest of their ill-gotten estates with an allowance of £60 a year in the Crown-rent. Acceptance of the advantages conferred in 1640 could hardly be reconciled with a demand for further compensation in 1660. To blame Strafford for enforcing the surrender would be natural and tempting, but was unthinkable, as any slight on the memory of the martyr-Viceroy who had given his life to uphold Charles I. would be fatal in a suppliant to Charles II. Lord Donegall, therefore, had to present matters in a way which should make it appear that his father and himself in relinquishing the fisheries were the victims of arbitrary power, and at the same time find a scapegoat to accuse—an attack upon whom would not offend the King. The position was delicate, and needed the best-considered falsehoods. Lord Donegall, however, was no witling, and the tradition of the “great Deputy” stirred his brain until at length the necessary culprit was hit upon in Deputy Wandesforde. He, in Strafford’s absence, signed the Patent of 1640, and on him all the blame for compelling the surrender was cast in 1660. The innocent Wandesforde was charged with having deprived Lord Donegall of a pension of £40 a year, and “forcing on him fresh Patents under colour of his having defective title.” This was as gross a myth as the fables of the Clotworthy pension or the promises of the “famous paper.” Wandesforde merely carried out arrangements previously made by the Lord Lieutenant; and had nothing to do with the surrender, or the question of an allowance. Yet this blameless subordinate, who had been dead twenty years, was saddled with the doings of his master and with the hagglings of the Commissioners for Remedying Defective Titles.