to my Lord, but says that he hath as good blood in his veins
as any man, though not so good a title, but that he will do nothing to
wrong or prejudice my Lord, and I hope he will not, nor I believe can;
but he tells me that Sir E. Spragg and Utber are the men that have done
my Lord the most wrong, and did bespatter him the most at Oxford, and
that my Lord was misled to believe that all that was there said was his,
which indeed it was not, and says that he did at that time complain
to his father of this his misfortune. This I confess is strange to me
touching these two men, but yet it may well enough as the world goes,
though I wonder I confess at the latter of the two, who always professes
great love to my Lord. Sir Roger Cuttance was with me in the morning,
and there gives me an account so clear about Bergen and the other
business against my Lord, as I do not see what can be laid to my Lord in
either, and tells me that Pen, however he now dissembles it, did on the
quarter deck of my Lord's ship, after he come on board, when my Lord
did fire a gun for the ships to leave pursuing the enemy, Pen did say,
before a great many, several times, that his heart did leap in his belly
for joy when he heard the gun, and that it was the best thing that could
be done for securing the fleet. He tells me also that Pen was the first
that did move and persuade my Lord to the breaking bulke, as a thing
that was now the time to do right to the commanders of the great ships,
who had no opportunity of getting anything by prizes, now his Lordship
might distribute to everyone something, and he himself did write down
before my Lord the proportions for each man. This I am glad of, though
it may be this dissembling fellow may, twenty to one, deny it.

27th. Up, and all the morning at my Lord Bruncker's lodgings with Sir J.
Minnes and [Sir] W. Pen about Sir W. Warren's accounts, wherein I do not
see that they are ever very likely to come to an understanding of them,
as Sir J. Minnes hath not yet handled them. Here till noon, and then
home to dinner, where Mr. Pierce comes to me, and there, in general,
tells me how the King is now fallen in and become a slave to the Duke of
Buckingham, led by none but him, whom he, Mr. Pierce, swears he knows do
hate the very person of the King, and would, as well as will, certainly
ruin him. He do say, and I think with right, that the King do in this do
the most ungrateful part of a master to a servant that ever was