write my letter fair, and sent it away, and then to talk
with my wife, and read, and so by daylight (the only time I think I have
done it this year) to supper, and then to my chamber to read and so to
bed, my mind very much eased after what I have done to-day.

29th. Up, and with Sir W. Batten to St. James's, to Sir W. Coventry's
chamber; where, among other things, he come to me, and told me that he
had received my yesterday's letters, and that we concurred very well in
our notions; and that, as to my place which I had offered to resign of
the Victualling, he had drawn up a letter at the same time for the Duke
of York's signing for the like places in general raised during this war;
and that he had done me right to the Duke of York, to let him know that
I had, of my own accord, offered to resign mine. The letter do bid us to
do all things, particularizing several, for the laying up of the ships,
and easing the King of charge; so that the war is now professedly over.
By and by up to the Duke of York's chamber; and there all the talk was
about Jordan's coming with so much indiscretion, with his four little
frigates and sixteen fire-ships from Harwich, to annoy the enemy. His
failures were of several sorts, I know not which the truest: that he
come with so strong a gale of wind, that his grapplings would not hold;
that he did come by their lee; whereas if he had come athwart their
hawse, they would have held; that they did not stop a tide, and come up
with a windward tide, and then they would not have come so fast. Now,
there happened to be Captain Jenifer by, who commanded the Lily in this
business, and thus says that, finding the Dutch not so many as they
expected, they did not know but that there were more of them above, and
so were not so earnest to the setting upon these; that they did do what
they could to make the fire-ships fall in among the enemy; and, for
their lives, neither Sir J. Jordan nor others could, by shooting several
times at them, make them go in; and it seems they were commanded by some
idle fellows, such as they could of a sudden gather up at Harwich; which
is a sad consideration that, at such a time as this, where the saving
the reputation of the whole nation lay at stake, and after so long a
war, the King had not credit to gather a few able men to command these
vessels. He says, that if they had come up slower, the enemy would, with
their boats and their great sloops, which they have to row with a gre