him go
on, and so Sir Thomas Clifford advised also, which one would think, if
he were a statesman worth a fart should be a sign of his foreseeing that
all shall do well. But I do forbear concluding any such thing from them.
He tells me that there is not so great confidence between any two men
of power in the nation at this day, that he knows of, as between my Lord
Arlington and Sir Thomas Clifford; and that it arises by accident only,
there being no relation nor acquaintance between them, but only Sir
Thomas Clifford's coming to him, and applying himself to him for
favours, when he come first up to town to be a Parliament-man. He tells
me that he do not think there is anything in the world for us possibly
to be saved by but the King of France's generousnesse to stand by us
against the Dutch, and getting us a tolerable peace, it may be, upon our
giving him Tangier and the islands he hath taken, and other things
he shall please to ask. He confirms me in the several grounds I have
conceived of fearing that we shall shortly fall into mutinys and
outrages among ourselves, and that therefore he, as a Treasurer, and
therefore much more myself, I say, as being not only a Treasurer but an
officer of the Navy, on whom, for all the world knows, the faults of all
our evils are to be laid, do fear to be seized on by some rude hands as
having money to answer for, which will make me the more desirous to get
off of this Treasurership as soon as I can, as I had before in my mind
resolved. Having done all this discourse, and concluded the kingdom in
a desperate condition, we parted; and I to my wife, with whom was Mercer
and Betty Michell, poor woman, come with her husband to see us after
the death of her little girle. We sat in the garden together a while,
it being night, and then Mercer and I a song or two, and then in (the
Michell's home), my wife, Mercer, and I to supper, and then parted and
to bed.

25th. Up, and with Sir W. Pen in his new chariot (which indeed is plain,
but pretty and more fashionable in shape than any coach he hath, and yet
do not cost him, harness and all, above L32) to White Hall; where staid
a very little: and thence to St. James's to [Sir] W. Coventry, whom I
have not seen since before the coming of the Dutch into the river, nor
did indeed know how well to go see him, for shame either to him or me,
or both of us, to find ourselves in so much misery. I find that he and
his fellow-Treasurers are in the utmost wa