the most unfit man for business in the world. Though
at last afterwards I found that he was not in this faulty, but hereby I
have got a clear evidence of my Lord Bruncker's opinion of him. My Lord
Bruncker presently ordered his coach to be ready and we to Woolwich, and
my Lord Sandwich not being come, we took a boat and about a mile off
met him in his Catch, and boarded him, and come up with him; and, after
making a little halt at my house, which I ordered, to have my wife see
him, we all together by coach to Mr. Boreman's, where Sir J. Minnes did
receive him very handsomely, and there he is to lie; and Sir J. Minnes
did give him on the sudden, a very handsome supper and brave discourse,
my Lord Bruncker, and Captain Cocke, and Captain Herbert being there,
with myself. Here my Lord did witness great respect to me, and very kind
expressions, and by other occasions, from one thing to another did take
notice how I was overjoyed at first to see the King's letter to his
Lordship, and told them how I did kiss it, and that, whatever he was,
I did always love the King. This my Lord Bruncker did take such notice
[of] as that he could not forbear kissing me before my Lord, professing
his finding occasion every day more and more to love me, and Captain
Cocke has since of himself taken notice of that speech of my Lord then
concerning me, and may be of good use to me. Among other discourse
concerning long life, Sir J. Minnes saying that his great-grandfather
was alive in Edward the Vth's time; my Lord Sandwich did tell us how few
there have been of his family since King Harry the VIIIth; that is to
say, the then Chiefe Justice, and his son the Lord Montagu, who was
father to Sir Sidney,

[These are the words in the MS., and not "his son and the Lord
Montagu," as in some former editions. Pepys seems to have written
Lord Montagu by mistake for Sir Edward Montagu.]

who was his father. And yet, what is more wonderfull, he did assure us
from the mouth of my Lord Montagu himself, that in King James's time
([when he] had a mind to get the King to cut off the entayle of some
land which was given in Harry the VIIIth's time to the family, with the
remainder in the Crowne); he did answer the King in showing how unlikely
it was that ever it could revert to the Crown, but that it would be a
present convenience to him; and did show that at that time there were
4,000 persons derived from the very body of the Chiefe Justice. It see