a-dressing?’ -- ‘I have so much reason to use patience,’ says the Queene, ‘that I can very well bear with it’ He thinks it may be the Queene hath commanded her to retire, though that is not likely Thence with Creed to hire a coach to carry us to Hide Parke, to-day there being a general muster of the King’s Guards horse and foot but they demand so high, that I, spying Mr Cutler the merchant, did take notice of him, and he going into his coach, and telling me that he was going to the muster, I asked and went along with him, where a goodly sight to see so many fine horses and officers, and the King, Duke, and others come by a-horseback, and the two Queenes in the Queene-Mother’s coach, (my Lady Castlemaine not being there) And after long being there, I light, and walked to the place where the King, Duke, &c did stand to see the horse and foot march by and discharge their guns, to show a French Marquisse (for whom this muster was caused) the goodness of our firemen, which indeed was very good, though not without a slip now and then and one broadside close to our coach we had going out of the Park, even to the nearnesse as to be ready to burn our hairs Yet methought all these gay men are not the soldiers that must do the King’s business, it being such as these that lost the old King all he had, and were beat by the most ordinary fellows that could be Thence with much ado out of the Park, and through St James’s down the waterside over to Lambeth, to see the Archbishop’s corps, (who is to be carried away to Oxford on Monday,) but come too late This day in the Duke’s chamber there being a Roman story in the hangings, and upon the standard written these four letters -- S P Q R, Sir G Carteret came to me to know what the meaning of those four letters were, which ignorance is not to be borne in a Privy Counsellor, methinks, what a schoolboy should be whipt for not knowing.

6th At my office all the morning, writing out a list of the King’s ships in my Navy collections with great pleasure.

7th In Mr Pett’s garden I eat some of the first cherries I have eat this year off the tree where the King himself had been gathering some this morning Deane tells me what Mr Pett did to-day, that my Lord Bristoll told the King that he will impeach the Chancellor of High Treason but I find that my Lord Bristoll hath undone himself already in everybody’s opinion, and now he endeavours to raise dust to put out other men’s eyes, as well as his own, but I hope it will not take, in consideration merely that it is hard for a Prince to spare an experienced old officer, be he never so corrupt, though I hope this man is not so, as some report him to be He tells me that Don John is yet alive, and not killed, as was said, in the great victory against the Spaniards in Portugall of late.

9th Sir W Pen tells me, my Lady Castlemaine was at Court, for all this talk this week, but it seems the King is stranger than ordinary to her.

10th I met Pierce the chirurgeon, who tells me that for certain the King is grown colder to my Lady Castlemaine than ordinary, and that he believes he begins to love the Queene, and do make much of her, more than he used to do Mr Coventry tells me that my Lord Bristoll hath this day impeached my Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords of High Treason.The chief of the articles are these 1st That he should be the occasion of the peace made with Holland lately upon such disadvantageous terms, and that he was bribed to it 2nd That Dunkirke was also sold by his advice chiefly, so much to the damage of England 3rd That he had £6000 given him for the drawing-up or promoting of the Irish declaration lately, concerning the division of the lands there 4th He did carry on the design of the Portugall match, so much to the prejudice of the Crown of England, notwithstanding that he knew the Queene is not capable of bearing children 5th That the Duke’s marrying of his daughter was a practice of his, thereby to raise his family, and that it was done by indiscreet courses 6th As to the breaking-off of the match with Parma, in which he was employed at the very time when the match with Portugall was made up here, which he took as a great slur to him, and so it was, and that, indeed, is the chief occasion of all this fewde 7th That he hath endeavoured to bring in Popery, and wrote to the Pope for a cap for a subject of the King of England’s (my Lord Aubigny⁵⁹), and some say that he lays it to the Chancellor, that a good Protestant Secretary, (Sir Edward Nicholas) was laid aside, and a Papist, Sir H Bennet, put in his room which is very strange, when the last of these two is his own creature, and such an enemy accounted to the Chancellor, that they never did nor do agree, and all the world did judge the Chancellor to be falling from the time that Sir H Bennet was brought in Besides my Lord Bristoll being a Catholique himself, all this is very strange