both good things to
please the Parliament, which I hope will do good. Pierce tells me that
all the town do cry out of our office, for a pack of fools and knaves;
but says that everybody speaks either well, or at least the best of me,
which is my great comfort, and think I do deserve it, and shall shew I
have; but yet do think, and he also, that the Parliament will send us
all going; and I shall be well contented with it, God knows! But he
tells me how Matt. Wren should say that he was told that I should say
that W. Coventry was guilty of the miscarriage at Chatham, though I
myself, as he confesses, did tell him otherwise, and that it was wholly
Pett's fault. This do trouble me, not only as untrue, but as a design
in some [one] or other to do me hurt; for, as the thing is false, so it
never entered into my mouth or thought, nor ever shall. He says that he
hath rectified Wren in his belief of this, and so all is well. He gone,
I to business till the evening, and then by chance home, and find the
fellow that come up with my wife, Coleman, last from Brampton, a silly
rogue, but one that would seem a gentleman; but I did not stay with him.
So to the office, where late, busy, and then to walk a little in the
garden, and so home to supper and to bed. News this tide, that about 80
sail of the Dutch, great and small were seen coming up the river this
morning; and this tide some of them to the upper end of the Hope.

28th. Up, and hear Sir W. Batten is come to town: I to see him; he is
very ill of his fever, and come to town only for advice. Sir J. Minnes,
I hear also, is very ill all this night, worse than before. Thence I
going out met at the gate Sir H. Cholmly coming to me, and I to him
in the coach, and both of us presently to St. James's, by the way
discoursing of some Tangier business about money, which the want of I
see will certainly bring the place into a bad condition. We find the
Duke of York and [Sir] W. Coventry gone this morning, by two o'clock, to
Chatham, to come home to-night: and it is fine to observe how both the
King and Duke of York have, in their several late journeys to and again,
done them in the night for coolnesse. Thence with him to the Treasury
Chamber, and then to the Exchequer to inform ourselves a little about
our warrant for L30,000 for Tangier, which vexes us that it is so far
off in time of payment. Having walked two or three turns with him in the
Hall we parted, and I home by coach, and did bus