No consideration or mercy was shown to him, and now that he was under lock and key all sorts of claims and accusations were made against him.[219] To add to his trouble he, who for thirty years at least had been looked upon as a wealthy merchant, was found to be well-nigh penniless. Philip was always a bad paymaster, and the 500 ducats a year he allowed to Guaras had been embargoed or stopped in Spain for some time previously. The great sum of 20,000 crowns, promised to him for his services in negotiating the reopening of trade, was never paid to him, though for the rest of his life he was petitioning piteously for it. Damian Dela, his tailor-steward, was arrested at the same time as his master and lodged in Newgate, whereupon Recorder Fleetwood, examining him in November, he revealed the sad condition of Guaras’ finances: “I finde that he hath not a groat to bless him withal. His household stuff is not worth forty shillings. He is in my opinion _Iro Pauperior_, and were it not that libertie is sweet I know not where in his own country he should have like entertainment.” By Fleetwood Guaras sent beseeching messages for mercy to Burghley, “his only hope and trust”; but it was not the Cecil way to befriend fallen men, and Guaras appealed to his former crony in vain. Slowly the act of accusation against Guaras was elaborated. Such portions of his letters as could be read were brought up against him,[220] his servants, one and all, were interrogated, whilst he himself was almost driven crazy by threats of the rack and the scaffold. The questions administered to him in prison are amongst Lord Burghley’s papers and at Simancas, and show the charges brought against him: “What letters had passed between you and the Scots Queen?” “What do you know of their contents and of the negotiations between her and Don Juan?” “How far did Don Juan proceed in the marriage treaty with the Queen of Scots?” “In the cipher between you and Don Juan, who were intended by the numbers 82, 29, and 38?” “What practices have been intended for disquieting the realm, and who were the principal authors?”[221] and many other questions of the same sort. In June, 1578, the case against him for conspiring against the State in favour of Mary Stuart was held to be proven, and the unfortunate man was lodged in the Tower, threatened now with death. To all interrogatories Guaras had answered haughtily that he was the diplomatic representative of the Catholic King, who would heavily avenge any injury done to him; but Philip had other cares to occupy him than to avenge a meddling merchant’s plots, of which he (Philip) had never approved.