l with Captain Cocke and spent half
an hour walking in the dusk of the evening with him, talking of the
sorrowful condition we are in, that we must be ruined if the Parliament
do not come and chastize us, that we are resolved to make a peace
whatever it cost, that the King is disobliging the Parliament in this
interval all that may be, yet his money is gone and he must have more,
and they likely not to give it, without a great deal of do. God knows
what the issue of it will be. But the considering that the Duke of York,
instead of being at sea as Admirall, is now going from port to port,
as he is at this day at Harwich, and was the other day with the King at
Sheernesse, and hath ordered at Portsmouth how fortifications shall be
made to oppose the enemy, in case of invasion, [which] is to us a sad
consideration, and as shameful to the nation, especially after so many
proud vaunts as we have made against the Dutch, and all from the folly
of the Duke of Albemarle, who made nothing of beating them, and Sir
John Lawson he always declared that we never did fail to beat them with
lesser numbers than theirs, which did so prevail with the King as to
throw us into this war.

23rd. At the office all the morning, where Sir W. Pen come, being
returned from Chatham, from considering the means of fortifying the
river Medway, by a chain at the stakes, and ships laid there with guns
to keep the enemy from coming up to burn our ships; all our care now
being to fortify ourselves against their invading us. At noon home to
dinner, and then to the office all the afternoon again, where Mr. Moore
come, who tells me that there is now no doubt made of a peace being
agreed on, the King having declared this week in Council that they would
treat at Bredagh. He gone I to my office, where busy late, and so to
supper and to bed. Vexed with our mayde Luce, our cook-mayde, who is a
good drudging servant in everything else, and pleases us, but that she
will be drunk, and hath been so last night and all this day, that she
could not make clean the house. My fear is only fire.

24th (Lord's day). With Sir W. Batten to White Hall, and there I to Sir
G. Carteret, who is mighty cheerful, which makes me think and by some
discourse that there is expectation of a peace, but I did not ask [him].
Here was Sir J. Minnes also: and they did talk of my Lord Bruncker,
whose father, it seems, did give Mr. Ashburnham and the present Lord
Digby L1200 to be made an Irish l