apists in
office, and to keep out any from coming in. I went to the King's Chapel
to the closet, and there I hear Cresset sing a tenor part along with the
Church musick very handsomely, but so loud that people did laugh at him,
as a thing done for ostentation. Here I met Sir G. Downing, who would
speak with me, and first to inquire what I paid for my kid's leather
gloves I had on my hand, and shewed me others on his, as handsome, as
good in all points, cost him but 12d. a pair, and mine me 2s. He told
me he had been seven years finding out a man that could dress English
sheepskin as it should be--and, indeed, it is now as good, in all
respects, as kid, and he says will save L100,000 a-year, that goes out
to France for kid's skins. Thus he labours very worthily to advance our
own trade, but do it with mighty vanity and talking. But then he told me
of our base condition, in the treaty with Holland and France, about our
prisoners, that whereas before we did clear one another's prisoners, man
for man, and we upon the publication of the peace did release all our's,
300 at Leith, and others in other places for nothing, the Dutch do
keep theirs, and will not discharge them with[out] paying their debts
according to the Treaty. That his instruments in Holland, writing to
our Embassadors about this to Bredagh, they answer them that they do not
know of any thing that they have done therein, but left it just as
it was before. To which, when they answer, that by the treaty their
Lordships had [not] bound our countrymen to pay their debts in prison,
they answer they cannot help it, and we must get them off as cheap as
we can. On this score, they demand L1100 for Sir G. Ascue, and L5000 for
the one province of Zealand, for the prisoners that we have therein. He
says that this is a piece of shame that never any nation committed, and
that our very Lords here of the Council, when he related this matter to
them, did not remember that they had agreed to this article; and swears
that all their articles are alike, as the giving away Polleroon, and
Surinam, and Nova Scotia, which hath a river 300 miles up the country,
with copper mines more than Swedeland, and Newcastle coals, the only
place in America that hath coals that we know of; and that Cromwell did
value those places, and would for ever have made much of them; but
we have given them away for nothing, besides a debt to the King of
Denmarke. But, which is most of all, they have discharged