[2] On 7 February 1627, he married Anne Boteler, a niece of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, a close friend and favourite of Charles I.

[5] He was part of the entourage that accompanied Carlisle on a diplomatic mission to Louis XIII after the passage of Prince Charles through Paris incognito on his way to Spain at the time of negotiations towards the ill-starred "Spanish Match".

His appointment as Master of Ordnance for his lifetime was granted on 31 August 1634; as was expected in the seventeenth century, he derived a tidy fortune from the position.

[8] By his own account, he bargained with the ambassador to land soldiers from the Spanish fleet at Dunkirk, at thirty shillings a head, though public neutrality had been enjoined by Charles.

[citation needed] The turning point came during the trial of Strafford in 1641, when Col. Lord Goring had revealed to Newport an amateurish plot of Royalist officers at Portsmouth to take London by surprise, seize the Tower and somehow rescue the king.

Goring betrayed the plot to Newport, who passed on the information to John Pym, who brought it forward at the most dramatic and opportune moment, sealing Strafford's fate in the bill of attainder.