forever, but I value it not; for he is a coxcomb, and, I doubt,
not over honest, by some things which I see; and yet, for all his folly,
he hath the good lucke, now and then, to speak his follies in as
good words, and with as good a show, as if it were reason, and to the
purpose, which is really one of the wonders of my life. Thence walked to
Westminster Hall; and there, in the Lords' House, did in a great crowd,
from ten o'clock till almost three, hear the cause of Mr. Roberts, my
Lord Privy Seal's son, against Win, who by false ways did get the
father of Mr. Roberts's wife (Mr. Bodvill) to give him the estate and
disinherit his daughter. The cause was managed for my Lord Privy Seal by
Finch the Solicitor [General]; but I do really think that he is truly a
man of as great eloquence as ever I heard, or ever hope to hear in all
my life. Thence, after long staying to speak with my Lord Sandwich, at
last he coming out to me and speaking with me about business of my Lord
Peterborough, I by coach home to the office, where all the afternoon,
only stept home to eat one bit and to the office again, having eaten
nothing before to-day. My wife abroad with my aunt Wight and Norbury. I
in the evening to my uncle Wight's, and not finding them come home, they
being gone to the Parke and the Mulberry garden, I went to the 'Change,
and there meeting with Mr. Hempson, whom Sir W. Batten has lately turned
out of his place, merely because of his coming to me when he came to
town before he went to him, and there he told me many rogueries of Sir
W. Batten, how he knows and is able to prove that Captain Cox of Chatham
did give him L10 in gold to get him to certify for him at the King's
coming in, and that Tom Newborne did make [the] poor men give him L3 to
get Sir W. Batten to cause them to be entered in the yard, and that Sir
W. Batten had oftentimes said: "by God, Tom, you shall get something and
I will have some on't." His present clerk that is come in Norman's' room
has given him something for his place; that they live high and (as
Sir Francis Clerk's lady told his wife) do lack money as well as other
people, and have bribes of a piece of sattin and cabinetts and other
things from people that deal with him, and that hardly any body goes to
see or hath anything done by Sir W. Batten but it comes with a bribe,
and that this is publickly true that his wife was a whore, and that
he had libells flung within his doors for a cuckold as soon as he