£1200 a year, but owes above £10,000". His office brought him in £20,000 a year, and he was known to make large profits by the sale of offices; he maintained his power by corruption and by jealously excluding from office men of high standing and ability. Gilbert Burnet described him as "the most hated minister that had ever been about the king". Worse men had been less detested, but Danby had none of the amiable virtues which often counteract the odium incurred by serious faults. John Evelyn, who knew him intimately, described him as "a man of excellent natural parts but nothing of generosity or gratefulness". The Earl of Shaftesbury, doubtless no friendly witness, spoke of him as an inveterate liar, "proud, ambitious, revengeful, false, prodigal and covetous to the highest degree", and Burnet supported his unfavourable judgment. His corruption, his submission to a tyrannical wife, his greed, his pale face and lean person, which had replaced the handsome features and comeliness of earlier days, were the subject of ridicule, from the witty sneers of Halifax to the coarse jests of the anonymous writers of innumerable lampoons. By his championship of the national policy he raised up formidable foes abroad without securing a single friend or supporter at home, and his fidelity to the national interests was now, through an act of personal spite, to be the occasion of his downfall. Kenyon describes the Danby administration by the autumn of 1678 as "weak, discredited, unpopular and unsuccessful"; it required only the Popish Plot to bring it down. Danby was accused of using the insane "revelations" of Israel Tonge for his own advantage; but as Kenyon notes, the King gave Danby an explicit order to investigate Tonge's claims, and whatever Danby's personal views, he had no choice but to comply. Impeachment and attainder In appointing a new secretary of state, Danby had preferred Sir William Temple, a strong adherent of the anti-French policy, to Ralph Montagu (later the Duke of Montagu). Montagu, after a quarrel with the Duchess of Cleveland, was dismissed from the king's employment. He immediately went over to the opposition, and in concert with Louis XIV and Paul Barillon, the French ambassador, who supplied him with a large sum of money, arranged a plan for effecting Danby's ruin. He obtained a seat in parliament; and in spite of Danby's endeavour to seize his papers by an order in