sequences of it, and the pride and presumption that brought us to it. At noon to the 'Change, and there find the discourse of town, and their countenances much changed; but yet not very plain. By and by comes Mr. Wayth to me; and discoursing of our ill success, he tells me plainly, from Captain Page's own mouth, who hath lost his arm in the fight, that the Dutch did pursue us two hours before they left us, and then they suffered us to go on homewards, and they retreated towards their coast: which is very sad news. The Duke much damped in his discourse, touching the late fight, and all the Court talk sadly of it. The Duke did give me several letters he had received from the fleet, and Sir W. Coventry and Sir W. Pen, who are gone down thither, for me to pick out some works to be done for the setting out the fleet again; and so I took them home with me, and was drawing out an abstract of them till midnight. And, as to news, I do find great reason to think that we are beaten in every respect, and that we are the losers. The Prince upon the Galloper, where both the Royall Charles and Royall Katharine had come twice aground, but got off. The Essex carried into Holland; the Swiftsure missing, Sir W. Barkeley, ever since the beginning of the fight. Captains Bacon, Tearne, Wood, Mootham, Whitty, and Coppin, slayne. The Duke of Albemarle writes, that he never fought with worse officers in his life, not above twenty of them behaving themselves like men. Sir William Clerke lost his leg; and in two days died. The Loyall George, Seven Oakes, and Swiftsure, are still missing, and have never, as the Generall writes himself, engaged with them. It was as great an alteration to

find myself required to write a sad letter instead of a triumphant one, to my Lady Sandwich this night, as ever on any occasion I had in my life.

8th. To my very great joy, I find Balty come home without any hurt, after the utmost imaginable danger he hath gone through in the Henery, being upon the quarter-deck with Harman all the time; and for which service, Harman I heard this day commended most seriously and most eminently by the Duke of York. As also the Duke did do most utmost right to Sir Thomas Teddiman, of whom a scandal was raised, but without cause, he having behaved himself most eminently brave all the whole fight, and to extraordinary great service and purpose, having given Trump himself such a broadside as was hardly ever given to any ship. Mings is shot through the face, and into the shoulder, where the bullet is lodged. Young Holmes is also ill wounded, and Atber in the Rupert. Balty tells me the case of the Henery; and it was, indeed, most extraordinary sad and desperate. After dinner, Balty and I to my office, and there talked a great deal of this fight; and I am mightily pleased in him, and have great content in, and hopes of, his doing well. Thence out to White Hall to a Committee for Tangier, but it met not. But, Lord! to see how melancholy the Court is, under the thoughts of this last overthrow, for so it is, instead of a victory, so much and so unreasonably expected. We hear the Swiftsure, Sir W. Barkeley, is come in safe to the Nore, after her being absent ever since the beginning of the fight, wherein she did not appear at all from beginning to end.

9th. The Court is divided about the Swiftsure and

the Essex's being safe; and wagers and odds laid on both sides. Sir W. Coventry is come to town; so I to his chamber. But I do not hear that he is at all pleased or satisfied with the late fight; but he tells me more news of our suffering, by the death of one or two captains, more than I knew before. But he do give over the thoughts of the safety of the Swiftsure or Essex.

10th. I met with Pierce, the surgeon, who is lately come from the fleet, and tells me that all the commanders, officers, and even the common seamen, do condemn every part of the late conduct of the Duke of Albemarle : both in his fighting at all, running among them in his retreat, and running the ships on ground; so as nothing can be worse spoken of. That Holmes, Spragg, and Smith do all the business, and the old and wiser commanders nothing: so as Sir Thomas Teddiman, whom the King and all the world speak well of, is mightily discontented, as being wholly slighted. He says we lost more after the Prince came than before, too. The Prince was so maimed, as to be forced to be towed home. He says all the fleet confess their being chased home by the Dutch; and yet the body of the Dutch that did it was not above forty sail at most; and yet this put us into the fright, as to bring all our ships on ground. He says, however, that the Duke of Albemarle is as high almost as ever, and pleases himself to think that he hath given the Dutch their bellies full, without sense of what he hath lost us; and talks how he knows now the way to beat them. But he says, that even Smith himself, one of his creatures, did himself condemn the late conduct from the

beginning to the end. He tells me further, how the Duke of York is wholly given up to his new mistress, my Lady Denham,1 going at noonday with all his gentlemen with him to visit her in Scotland Yard; she declaring she will not be his mistress, as Mrs. Price,2 to go up and down the Privy-stairs, but will be owned publickly; and so she is. Mr. Brouncker, it seems, was the pimp to bring it about; and my Lady Castlemaine, who designs thereby to fortify herself by the Duke; there being a falling-out the other day between the King and her: on this occasion, the Queene, in ordinary talk before the ladies in her drawing-room, did say to my Lady Castlemaine that she feared the King did take cold by staying so late abroad at her house. She answered, before them all, that he did not stay so late abroad with her, for he went betimes thence, though he do not before one, two, or three in the morning, but

1

Margaret Brook, married to Sir John Denham, May 25, 1665. George Brook, third son of William Brook, Lord Cobham, was attainted and executed for his share in Ralegh's plot. He left a son, William Brook, who, having been restored in blood, and made a Knight of the Bath, espoused Penelope, third daughter of Sir Moyses Hill, of Hillsborough Castle, in Ireland, the ancestor of the Marquises of Downshire; by whom he had issue three daughters: First, Hill, who became the wife of Sir William Boothby; the second, described, on the lettering of her engraved portrait, as “ Lady Whitmore ;" and the third, Lady Denham. Their mother, Lady Brook, surviving her husband, re-married Edward Russell, youngest son of Francis, fifth Earl of Bedford, whose sister was Countess of Bristol. Hence the relationship, or rather the connexion, between the two families; for Hamilton, mentioning that "Les Demoiselles Brook" assisted at all Lord Bristol's fêtes, calls them 66 ses parents."-Mémoires de Grammont.

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2 The Maid of Honour.

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must stay somewhere else. The King then coming in, and overhearing, did whisper in the eare aside, and told her she was a bold, impertinent woman, and bid her to be gone out of the Court, and not come again till he sent for her; which she did presently, and went to a lodging in the Pell Mell, and kept there two or three days, and then sent to the King to know whether she might send for her things away out of her house. The King sent to her, she must first come and view them: and so she come, and the King went to her, and all friends again. He tells me she did, in her anger, say she would be even with the King, and print his letters to her; so, putting all together, we are, and are like to be, in a sad condition; we are endeavouring to raise money by borrowing it of the City; but I do not think the City will lend a farthing. Sir G. Carteret and I walked an hour in the church-yard, under Henry the Seventh's Chapel, he being lately come from the fleet; and tells me, as I hear from every body else, that the management in the late fight was bad, from top to bottom. That several said that this would not have been, if my Lord Sandwich had had the ordering of it. Nay, he tells me that certainly, had my Lord Sandwich had the misfortune to have done as they have done, the King could not have saved him. There is, too, nothing but discontent among the officers; and all the old, experienced men are slighted. He tells He tells me, to my question, but as a great secret, that the dividing of the fleet did proceed first from a proposition from the fleet, though agreed to hence; but he confesses it arose from want of due intelligence. He do, however, call the fleet's retreat on Sunday a very honourable one,

VOL. III.

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