Thus, on 11th December, 'I got privately into the council of ye rebell army at Whitehall, where I heard horrid villanies.' Having money in hand, either from savings during the four years' sojourn abroad, where his expenses (including all purchases of objects of art and vertu) did not amount to more than L300 a year, or else from his child-wife's dowry, he dabbled in land speculation with the fairly satisfactory result that on the whole he does not appear to have lost much by it.
On 17th January, 1649, he 'heard the rebell Peters incite the rebell powers met in the Painted Chamber to destroy his Majesty, and saw that archtraytor Bradshaw, who not long after condemn'd him.' But his loyalty kept him from being present at the death-scene.

'The villanie of the rebells proceeding now so far as to trie, condemne and murder our excellent King on the 30th of this month, struck me with such horror that I kept the day of his martyrdom a fast, and would not be present at that execrable wickednesse, receiving the sad account of it from my Brother George and Mr.Owen, who came to visite me this afternoone, and recounted all the circumstances.' While he 'went through a course of chymestrie at Sayes Court,' and otherwise engaged in study and in the examination of works of art, he became disquieted about the condition of affairs in Paris.
Communications with his wife appear to have been very few and far between, although with his father-in-law he 'kept up a political correspondence' in cipher 'with no small danger of being discovered.' In April he touched 'suddaine resolutions' of going to France, before he received the news that Conde's siege of Paris had ended by peace being concluded.

The immediate carrying out of this intention was hindered by a rush of blood to the brain.

'I fell dangerously ill of my head: was blistered and let blood behind ye ears and forehead: on the 23rd.

began to have ease by using the fumes of a cammomile on embers applied to my eares after all the physicians had don their best.' On 17th June, however, he 'got a passe from the rebell Bradshaw, then in greate power,' and on 12th July went via Gravesend to Dover and Calais, arriving at Paris on 1st.August.Curiously enough his Diary makes no mention of the child-wife, from whom he had 'been absent....