and when released hastened to offer his sword to John IV. He travelled to England, where he spent some time at the court of Charles I, and thence passing over to Holland assisted the Portuguese ambassador to equip a fleet in aid of Portugal, and himself brought it safely to Lisbon in October 1641. For the next three years he was employed in various important military commissions and further busied himself in defending by his pen the king's title to his newly acquired throne. (A) Richelieu had told De Sourdis (French fleet) to let others take the chestnuts out of the fire "tirer les marrons du feu". He said it would take 10yrs to replace the French fleet and told De Sourdis 'on no occasion to risk the fleet unless practically certain of success'. Imprisonment and exile An intrigue with the beautiful countess of Vila Nova, and her husband's jealousy, led to his arrest on 19 November 1644 on a false charge of assassination, and he lay in prison about nine years. Though his innocence was clear, the court of his Order, that of Christ, influenced by his enemies, deprived him of his comenda and sentenced him to perpetual banishment in Africa with a heavy money fine, and the king would not intervene to save him. Owing perhaps to the intercession of the queen regent of France and other powerful friends, his sentence was finally commuted into one of exile to the colony of Brazil. During his long imprisonment he finished and printed his history of the Catalan Revolt, and also wrote and published a volume of Spanish verses and some religious treatises, and composed in Portuguese a volume of homely philosophy, the Carta de Guia de Casados and a Memorial in his own defence to the king, which Herculano considered perhaps the most eloquent piece of reasoning in the language. During his exile in Brazil, where he sailed on 17 April 1655, he lived at Bahia, where he wrote one of his Epanaphoras de varia Historia and two parts of his masterpiece, the . Literary endeavors He returned home in 1659, and from then until 1663 we find him on and off in Lisbon, frequenting the celebrated Academia dos Generosos, of which he was five times elected president. In the last year he proceeded to Parma and Rome, by way of England, and France, and Afonso VI of Portugal