ented to let
their Narratives sleep, they being not only contradictory in some things
(as he observed about the business of the Duke of Albemarle's being to
follow the Prince upon dividing the fleete, in case the enemy come out),
but neither of them to be maintained in others. That the business the
other night of my Lord Anglesey at the Council was happily got over
for my Lord, by his dexterous silencing it, and the rest, not urging it
further; forasmuch as, had the Duke of Buckingham come in time enough,
and had got it by the end, he, would have toused him in it; Sir W.
Coventry telling me that my Lord Anglesey did, with such impudence,
maintain the quarrel against the Commons and some of the Lords, in the
business of my Lord Clarendon, that he believes there are enough would
be glad but of this occasion to be revenged of him. He tells me that
he hears some of the Thomsons are like to be of the Commission for the
Accounts, and Wildman, which he much wonders at, as having been a false
fellow to every body, and in prison most of the time since the King's
coming in. But he do tell me that the House is in such a condition that
nobody can tell what to make of them, and, he thinks, they were never
in before; that every body leads, and nobody follows; and that he do
now think that, since a great many are defeated in their expectation
of being of the Commission, now they would put it into such hands as it
shall get no credit from: for, if they do look to the bottom and see
the King's case, they think they are then bound to give the King money;
whereas, they would be excused from that, and therefore endeavour to
make this business of the Accounts to signify little. I spoke with him
about my Lord Sandwich's business, in which he is very friendly, and do
say that the unhappy business of the prizes is it that hath brought
all this trouble upon him, and the only thing that made any thing else
mentioned, and it is true. So having discoursed with him, I spent some
time with Sir Stephen Fox about the business of our adjusting the new
method of the Excise between the Guards household and Tangier, the Lords
Commissioners of the Treasury being now resolved to bring all their
management into a course of payment by orders, and not by tallies, and
I am glad of it, and so by water home late, and very dark, and when come
home there I got my wife to read, and then come Captain Cocke to me; and
there he tells me, to my great satisfaction, that Si