Lord Howard of Escricke, although an abandoned debauchee, made occasional pretensions to piety. He was an intimate of Shaftesbury and of Monmouth, but detested by Russel on account of the infamy of his character. Plots, counter-plots, and sham-plots, were at this time wrought like mine and countermine by each party, under the other's vantage-ground. One Fitzharris had written a virulent libel against the court party, which he probably intended to father upon the whigs; but being seized by Sir William Waller, he changed his note, and averred, that he had been employed by the court to write this libel, and to fix it upon the exclusionists; and to this probable story he added, _ex mera gratia_, a new account of the old Popish Plot. The court resolved to make an example of Fitzharris; they tried and convicted him of treason, for the libel fell nothing short of it. When condemned, finding his sole resource in the mercy of the crown, he retracted his evidence against the court, and affirmed, that Treby, the recorder, and Bethel and Cornish, the two sheriffs, had induced him to forge that accusation; and that Lord Howard was the person who drew up instructions, pointing out to him what he was to swear, and urging him so to manage his evidence, as to criminate the Queen and the Duke of York. The confession of Fitzharris did not save his life, although he adhered to it upon the scaffold. Lord Howard, as involved in this criminal intrigue, was sent to the Tower, where he uttered and published a canting declaration, asserting his innocence, upon the truth of which he received the sacrament. He is said, however, to have taken the communion in _lamb's wool_, (_i. e._ ale poured on roasted apples and sugar,) to which profanation Dryden alludes, with too much levity, in the second line above quoted. The circumstance is also mentioned in "Absalom's IX Worthies:" Then prophane Nadab, that hates all sacred things, And on that score abominateth kings; With Mahomet wine he damneth, with intent To erect his Paschal-lamb's-wool-sacrament. Lord Howard was at length set at liberty from the Tower, upon finding bail, when he engaged under Shaftesbury, and ran into all the excesses of the party. Being deeply involved in the Rye-house Plot, he fled upon the discovery of that affair, and was detected in his shirt, covered with soot, in a chimney; a sordid place of concealment, which well suited the spirit of the man. A tory ballad-maker has the following strain of prophetic exultation on Howard's commitment: Next valiant and noble Lord Howard, That formerly dealt in lambs-wool; Who knowing what it is to be towered, By impeaching may fill the jails full. _The Conspiracy, or the Discovery of the Fanatic Plot._