of winds, good ports, and men, but it is our pride, and the laziness of the merchant The main thing he desired to speak with me about was, to understand my Lord Sandwich’s intentions as to going to sea with this fleet saying that the Duke if he desires it is most willing to do it, but thinking that twelve ships is not a fleet fit for my Lord to be troubled to go out with he is not willing to offer it to him till he hath some intimations of his mind to go, or not To the King’s closet, whither by and by the King come, my Lord Sandwich carrying the sword A Bishop preached, but he speaking too low for me to hear By and by my Lord Sandwich come forth, and called me to him and we fell into discourse a great while about his business, wherein he seems to be very open with me, and to receive my opinion as he used to do and I hope I shall become necessary to him again He desired me to think of the fitness, or not, for him to offer himself to go to sea, and to give him my thoughts in a day or two Thence after sermon among the ladies in the Queene’s side, where I saw Mrs Stewart, very fine and pretty, but far beneath my Lady Castlemaine Thence with Mr Povy³³ home to dinner, where extraordinary cheers And after dinner up and down to see his house And in a word, methinks, for his perspective in the little closet, his room floored above with woods of several colours, like but above the best cabinet-work I ever saw, his grotto and vault, with his bottles of wine, and a well therein to keep them cool, his furniture of all sorts, his bath at the top of the house, good pictures, and his manner of eating and drinking, do surpass all that ever I did see of one man in all my life.

31st I was told to-day, that upon Sunday night last being the King’s birth-day, the King was at my Lady Castlemaine’s lodgings (over the hither-gate at Lambert’s lodgings) dancing with fiddlers all night almost, and all the world coming by taking notice of it.

June 1st Southwell (Sir W Pen’s friend) tells me the very sad newes of my Lord Teviott’s and nineteen more commission officers being killed at Tangier by the Moores, by an ambush of the enemy upon them, while they were surveying their lines which is very sad, and he says, afflicts the King much To the King’s house, and saw The Silent Woman, but methought not so well done or so good a play as I formerly thought it to be Before the play was done, it fell such a storm of hayle, that we in the middle of the pit were fain to rise and all the house in a disorder.

2nd It seems my Lord Teviott’s design was to go a mile and half out of the town, to cut down a wood in which the enemy did use to lie in ambush He had sent several spyes but all brought word that the way was clear, and so might be for any body’s discovery of an enemy before you are upon them There they were all snapt, he and all his officers, and about two hundred men, as they say, there being left now in the garrison but four captains This happened the 3rd of May last, being not before that day twelvemonth of his entering into his government there but at his going out in the morning he said to some of his officers, ‘Gentlemen, let us look to ourselves, for it was this day three years that so many brave Englishmen were knocked on the head by the Moores, when Fines made his sally out’.

4th Mr Coventry discoursing this noon about Sir W Batten, (what a sad fellow he is told me how the King told him the other day how Sir W Batten, being in the ship with him and Prince Rupert when they expected to fight with Warwicke, did walk up and down sweating with a napkin under his throat to dry up his sweat and that Prince Rupert being a most jealous man, and particularly of Batten, do walk up and down swearing bloodily to the King, that Batten had a mind to betray them to-day, and that the napkin was a signal, ‘but, by God,’ says he, ‘if things go ill, the first thing I will do is to shoot him’ He discoursed largely and bravely to me concerning the different sorts of valours, the active and passive valour For the latter, he brought as an instance General Blake, who, in the defending of Taunton and Lime for the Parliament, did through his sober sort of valour defend it the most opiniâstrement that ever any man did any thing, and yet never was the man that ever made an attaque by land or sea but rather avoyded it on all even fair occasions On the other side, Prince Rupert, the boldest attaquer in the world for personal courage, and yet in the defending of Bristol no man did any thing worse, he wanting the patience and seasoned head to consult and advise for defence, and to bear with the evils of a siege The like he says of my Lord Teviott, who was the boldest adventurer of his person in the world, and from a mean man in few years was come to this greatness of command and repute only by the death of all his officers, he many times having the luck of being the only survivor of them all, by venturing upon services for