ile, that the
Duke of York, he tells me, was mightily offended at it. The Duke of
Monmouth's mother's brother hath a place at Court; and being a Welchman
(I think he told me) will talk very broad of the King's being married to
his sister. The King did the other day, at the Council, commit my Lord
Digby's' chaplin, and steward, and another servant, who went upon the
process begun there against their lord, to swear that they saw him at
church, end receive the Sacrament as a Protestant, (which, the judges
said, was sufficient to prove him such in the eye of the law); the King,
I say, did commit them all to the Gate-house, notwithstanding their
pleading their dependance upon him, and the faith they owed him as their
lord, whose bread they eat. And that the King should say, that he would
soon see whether he was King, or Digby. That the Queene-Mother hath
outrun herself in her expences, and is now come to pay very ill, or run
in debt; the money being spent that she received for leases. He believes
there is not any money laid up in bank, as I told him some did hope;
but he says, from the best informers he can assure me there is no such
thing, nor any body that should look after such a thing; and that there
is not now above L80,000 of the Dunkirke money left in stock. That
Oliver in the year when he spent L1,400,000 in the Navy, did spend in
the whole expence of the kingdom L2,600,000. That all the Court are
mad for a Dutch war; but both he and I did concur, that it was a thing
rather to be dreaded than hoped for; unless by the French King's falling
upon Flanders, they and the Dutch should be divided. That our Embassador
had, it is true, an audience; but in the most dishonourable way
that could be; for the Princes of the Blood (though invited by our
Embassador, which was the greatest absurdity that ever Embassador
committed these 400 years) were not there; and so were not said to give
place to our King's Embassador. And that our King did openly say, the
other day in the Privy Chamber, that he would not be hectored out of his
right and preeminencys by the King of France, as great as he was. That
the Pope is glad to yield to a peace with the French (as the newes-book
says), upon the basest terms that ever was. That the talke which these
people about our King, that I named before, have, is to tell him how
neither privilege of Parliament nor City is any thing; but his will is
all, and ought to be so: and their discourse, it seems, wh