to hawl it
taught. It seems very remarkable to me, and of great honour to the
Dutch, that those of them that did go on shore to Gillingham, though
they went in fear of their lives, and were some of them killed; and,
notwithstanding their provocation at Schelling, yet killed none of our
people nor plundered their houses, but did take some things of easy
carriage, and left the rest, and not a house burned; and, which is to
our eternal disgrace, that what my Lord Douglas's men, who come after
them, found there, they plundered and took all away; and the watermen
that carried us did further tell us, that our own soldiers are far more
terrible to those people of the country-towns than the Dutch themselves.
We were told at the batteries, upon my seeing of the field-guns that
were there, that, had they come a day sooner, they had been able to have
saved all; but they had no orders, and lay lingering upon the way, and
did not come forward for want of direction. Commissioner Pett's house
was all unfurnished, he having carried away all his goods. I met with no
satisfaction whereabouts the chaine was broke, but do confess I met with
nobody that I could well expect to have satisfaction [from], it being
Sunday; and the officers of the Yard most of them abroad, or at the Hill
house, at the pay of the Chest, which they did make use of to day to do
part in. Several complaints, I hear, of the Monmouth's coming away too
soon from the chaine, where she was placed with the two guard-ships to
secure it; and Captain Robert Clerke, my friend, is blamed for so
doing there, but I hear nothing of him at London about it; but Captain
Brookes's running aground with the "Sancta Maria," which was one of the
three ships that were ordered to be sunk to have dammed up the River
at the chaine, is mightily cried against, and with reason, he being the
chief man to approve of the abilities of other men, and the other two
slips did get safe thither and he run aground; but yet I do hear that
though he be blameable, yet if she had been there, she nor two more to
them three would have been able to have commanded the river all over. I
find that here, as it hath been in our river, fire-ships, when fitted,
have been sunk afterwards, and particularly those here at the Mussle,
where they did no good at all. Our great ships that were run aground
and sunk are all well raised but the "Vanguard," which they go about to
raise to-morrow. "The Henery," being let loose to driv