which is want of victuals; for we have not wherewith to answer our service; and how much better it would have been if the Duke's advice had been taken, for the fleet to have gone presently out; but, God help the King! while no better counsels are given, and what is given no better taken. I have received letters from my Lord Sandwich to-day, speaking very high about the prize-goods, that he would have us to fear nobody, but be very confident in what we have done, and not to confess any fault or doubt of what he hath done; for the King hath allowed it, and do now confirm it, and do send orders, as he says, for nothing to be disturbed that his Lordship hath ordered therein as to the division of the goods to the fleet; which do comfort us. To the Still Yard, which place, however, is now shut up of the Plague; but I was there, and we now make no bones of it. Much talk there is of the Chancellor's speech and the King's at the Parliament's meeting, which are very well liked; and that we shall certainly, by their speeches, fall out with France at this time, together with the Dutch, which will find us work.

18th. Making up my accounts of Tangier, which I did with great difficulty, and after eating something, to-bed, my mind eased of a great deal of figures and castings.

19th. Come to an agreement yesterday with my landlady for £6 per month, for so many rooms for myself, them, and my wife, and maid, when she shall come, and to pay, besides, for my dyett. To the Duke of Albemarle this evening; and, among other things, spoke to him for my wife's brother Balty to be of his guard, which he kindly answered that he should. My business of the victualling goes on as I would have it;

and now my head is full how to make some profit of it to myself or people. To that end, when I come home, I wrote a letter to Mr. Coventry, offering myself to be the Surveyor-Generall, and am apt to think he will assist me in it, but I do not set my heart much on it, though it would be a good help.

20th. Up, and had my last night's letters brought back to me, which troubles me, because of my accounts, lest they should be asked for before they come, which I abhor, being more ready to give than they can be to demand them: so I sent away an express to Oxford with them, and another to Portsmouth, with a copy of my letter to Mr. Coventry.

22nd. Met some letters, which made me resolve to go after church to my Lord Duke of Albemarle's: so, after dinner, I took Cocke's chariott, and to Lambeth ; but, in going and getting over the water and through White Hall, I spent so much time, the Duke had almost dined. However, fresh meat was brought for me to his table, and there I dined, and full of discourse and very kind. There they are again talking of the prizes, and my Lord Duke did speak very broad that my Lord Sandwich and Pen should do what they would, and answer for themselves. For his part, he would lay all before the King.

23rd. On board the East India ship, where my Lord Brouncker had provided a great dinner. But I am troubled with the much talk and conceitedness of Mrs. Williams, in case she be not married to my Lord. Captain Taylor with me to the office, and there he and I reckoned; and I perceive I shall get £100 profit by my services of late to him, which is a very good thing.

24th. My Lord Sandwich is come to town: so I pre

sently to Boreman's, where he is, and there found him: he mighty kind to me, but no opportunity of discourse private yet, which he tells me he must have with me: only his business is sudden to go to the fleet to get out a few ships to drive away the Dutch. To him again to Captain Cocke's, where he supped, and lies, and never saw him more merry; and here is Charles Herbert, who the King hath lately knighted. My lord, to my great content, did tell me before them, that never anything was read to the King and Council, all the chief Ministers of State being there, as my letter about the victualling was, and no more said upon it than a most thorough consent to every word was said.

25th. My Lord tells me that Mr. Coventry and he are not reconciled, but declared enemies-the only occasion of it being, he tells me, his ill usage from him about the first Fight, wherein he had no right done him, which, methinks, is a poor occasion, for, in my conscience, that was no design of Coventry's. He tells me, as very private, that there are great factions at the Court between the King's party and the Duke of York's, and that the King, which is a strange difficulty, do favour my Lord in opposition to the Duke's partythat my Lord Chancellor, being now, to be sure, the patron of the Duke's, it is a mystery whence it should be that Mr. Coventry is looked upon by him as an enemy to him; that if he had a mind himself to be out of this imployment, as Mr. Coventry, he believes, wishes, and himself and I do incline to wish it also, in many respects, yet he believes he shall not be able, because of the King, who will keep him in on purpose, in opposition to the other party; that Prince Rupert

and he are all possible friends in the world; that Coventry hath aggravated this business of the prizes, though never so great plundering in the world as while the Duke and he were at sea; and in Sir John Lawson's time he could take and pillage, and then sink a whole ship in the Straights, and Coventry say nothing to it; that my Lord Arlington is his fast friend; that the Chancellor is cold to him, and, though I told him that I and the world do take my Lord Chancellor, in his speech the other day, to have said as much as could be wished, yet he thinks he did not. That my Lord Chancellor do from hence begin to be cold to him, because of his seeing him and Arlington so great: that nothing at Court is minded but faction and pleasure, and nothing intended of general good to the Kingdom by anybody heartily; so that he believes with me, that in a little time confusion will certainly come over all the nation. He told me how a design was carried on a while ago, for the Duke of York to raise an army in the North, and to be the Generall of it, and all this without the knowledge or advice of the Duke of Albemarle, which, when he come to know, he was so vexed, they were fain to let it fall to content him: that his matching with the family of Sir G. Carteret do make the difference greater between Coventry and him-they being enemies; that the Chancellor did, as everybody else, speak well of me the other day, but yet was, at the Committee for Tangier, angry that I should offer to suffer a bill of exchange to be protested.

26th. Sir Christopher Mings and I together by water to the Tower; and I find him a very witty, well-spoken fellow, and mighty free to tell his parentage, being a

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shoemaker's son. I to the 'Change, where I hear how the French have taken two, and sunk one, of our merchant-men in the Straights, and carried the ships to Toulon; so that there is no expectation but we must fall out with them. The 'Change pretty full, and the town begins to be lively again, though the streets very empty, and most shops shut.

27th. To the Duke of Albemarle's, and there much company, but I staid and dined, and he makes mighty much of me; and here he tells us the Dutch are gone, and have lost above 150 cables and anchors, through the late foul weather. He proposed to me from Mr. Coventry that I should be Surveyor-Generall of the Victualling business, which I accepted. But, indeed, the terms in which Mr. Coventry proposes it for me are the most obliging that ever I could expect from any man, and more; he saying that I am the fittest man in England; and that he is sure, if I will undertake, I will perform it; and that it will be also a very desirable thing that I might have this encouragement, my encouragement in the Navy alone being in no wise proportionable to my pains or deserts. This, added to the letter I had three days since, from Mr. Southerne,1 signifying that the Duke of York had, in his master's absence, opened my letters, and commanded him to tell me that he did approve of my being the SurveyorGeneral, do make me joyful beyond myself that I cannot express it, to see, that as I do take pains, so God blesses me, and hath sent me masters that do observe that I take pains.

28th. Sir W. Clerke tells me the Parliament hath

1 Secretary to Sir W. Coventry.