The besieged had intended to attempt a general sally, but the common soldiers suspected their officers of an intention to escape and desert them. To allay this suspicion Goring and the other leaders took a solemn engagement to deliver themselves up as prisoners, and submit to the mercy of their enemies, if thereby they could purchase the liberty of their followers (ib. p. 208). In the capitulation signed on 27 Aug., Goring and the leaders surrendered to mercy, while quarter was promised to the soldiers. Goring was sent prisoner to Windsor Castle; he had been voted a rebel on 5 June, and it was decided on 25 Sept. that he should be impeached (Rushworth, vii. 1139, 1272). Goring vainly pleaded his right to a trial by his peers and the promise of Fairfax that his life should be saved, a promise which Fairfax explained did not guarantee him from punishment by the civil power (Cary, Memorials of the Civil War, ii. 26; see also Fairfax, Thomas, third Lord Fairfax). On 10 Nov. the House of Commons voted that Goring should be banished, but on 13 Dec. the independents, having regained the ascendency, rescinded this vote, and on 2 Feb. 1649 an ordinance was passed constituting a high court of justice for the trial of Goring and other prominent offenders. He was sentenced to death on 6 March, but two days later the commons thought fit to respite his execution. In the division on Goring's case, the numbers for and against being equal, the speaker's casting vote turned the scale in favour of mercy (Old Parliamentary History, xviii. 145, 472, xix. 55). According to Whitelocke and Clarendon, Lenthal gave as a reason for his vote the favours he had formerly received from Goring (Memorials, ff. 382, 386; Rebellion, xi. 259). A contemporary letter, however, attributes his escape to the intervention of the Spanish and Dutch ambassadors (Carte, Original Letters, i. 247). On 7 May 1649 Goring, on his petition to the House of Commons, was pardoned as to his life, and set at liberty (Old Parliamentary History, xix. 126). Shortly afterwards he rejoined Charles II on the continent, and remained in exile during the rest of the interregnum. In the spring of 1652 he was employed by Charles to negotiate with the Duke of Lorraine for the relief of Ireland, and to propose a marriage between the Duke of York and a daughter of the Duke of Lorraine (Cal. Clarendon Papers, ii. 119, 126). His negotiations met with little success; Clarendon complains of his unskilful activity, and his habit of censuring plans to which he was not privy. ‘As he is a very honest worthy person,’ wrote Hyde to Nicholas, ‘so he is not for business, nor will ever submit to half those straits and necessities which all men must do who desire to serve the king’ (ib. iii. 57, 73, 145). Nevertheless the two remained on very good terms, and Goring signs himself to Hyde ‘yours through thick and thin’ (Cal. Clarendon Papers, iii. 77). Nicholas characterises Goring in 1651 as ‘the ablest and faithfullest person that can be employed now by the king to do him real service in France’ (Nicholas Papers, p. 255). During the latter part of the exile of Charles II, Goring does not seem to have been employed, no doubt on account of his advanced age. He was, however, one of the chief agents in the attempt to use Sexby and the Levellers in the king's service, and the arrest of Manning, the spy, was due to his suggestion (Cal. Clarendon Papers, iii. 40, 51, 69). At the Restoration he was appointed captain of the king's guard, and took his place in the privy council, but did not regain his lucrative office as farmer of the tobacco customs, nor did he obtain much satisfaction for his losses in the king's service. Of his once great estate he could only leave 450l. a year to his heir. The king, however, had granted him on 26 Sept. 1661 a pension of 2,000l. a year, which was in part continued to his successor (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1663–4, pp. 6, 17, 147). Goring died at Brentford on 6 Jan. 1662–3, aged, according to Smyth, about eighty (Obituary of Richard Smyth, p. 57). He was buried on 14 Jan. in Westminster Abbey, in St. John Baptist's Chapel, where his wife Mary, second daughter of Edward Nevill, sixth lord Abergavenny, had been interred on 15 July 1648 (Chester, Westminster Abbey Registers, pp. 142–58).
By her he had two sons and four daughters, viz. (1) George, lord Goring [q. v.]; (2) Charles, who charged with his brother at the second battle of Newbury, succeeded his father as Earl of Norwich, married the widow of Sir Richard Baker, and died without issue, 3 March 1672 (Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. p. 146; Collins, ix. 459); (3) Elizabeth, married William, lord Brereton, of Ireland; (4) Mary, married Sir Drue Dene of Maplestead, Essex; (5) Diana, married, first, Thomas Covert of Slaugham, Sussex, and secondly, George, son of Endymion Porter, who was lieutenant-general in the western army, under the command of his brother-in-law, George Goring, and was characterised by him as ‘the best company, but the worst officer that ever served the king’ (Bulstrode, Memoirs, p. 137); (6) Catherine, married William Scott of Scott's Hall, Kent, whose petition for a divorce from her is recorded in Burton's account of the parliament of 1656 (Diary, i. 205, 335).
