Bruncker to speak with
him, and it was to dine with him and his Lady Williams (which I have not
now done in many months at their own table) and Mr. Wren, who is come
to dine with them, the first time he hath been at the office since his
being the Duke of York's Secretary. Here we sat and eat and talked and
of some matters of the office, but his discourse is as yet but weak in
that matter, and no wonder, he being new in it, but I fear he will not
go about understanding with the impatience that Sir W. Coventry did.
Having dined, I away, and with my wife and Mercer, set my wife down at
the 'Change, and the other at White Hall, and I to St. James's, where we
all met, and did our usual weekly business with the Duke of York. But,
Lord! methinks both he and we are mighty flat and dull over what we
used to be, when Sir W. Coventry was among us. Thence I into St. James's
Park, and there met Mr. Povy; and he and I to walk an hour or more in
the Pell Mell, talking of the times. He tells me, among other things,
that this business of the Chancellor do breed a kind of inward distance
between the King and the Duke of York, and that it cannot be avoided;
for though the latter did at first move it through his folly, yet he is
made to see that he is wounded by it, and is become much a less man than
he was, and so will be: but he tells me that they are, and have always
been, great dissemblers one towards another; and that their parting
heretofore in France is never to be thoroughly reconciled between them.
He tells me that he believes there is no such thing like to be, as a
composition with my Lady Castlemayne, and that she shall be got out of
the way before the Parliament comes; for he says she is as high as ever
she was, though he believes the King is as weary of her as is possible,
and would give any thing to remove her, but he is so weak in his passion
that he dare not do it; that he do believe that my Lord Chancellor will
be doing some acts in the Parliament which shall render him popular;
and that there are many people now do speak kindly of him that did not
before; but that, if he do do this, it must provoke the King, and that
party that removed him. He seems to doubt what the King of France will
do, in case an accommodation shall be made between Spain and him for
Flanders, for then he will have nothing more easy to do with his army
than to subdue us. Parted with him at White Hall, and, there I took
coach and took up my wife and Merc