that Prince Rupert and he are all possible friends in the world;
that Coventry hath aggravated this business of the prizes, though never
so great plundering in the world as while the Duke and he were at sea;
and in Sir John Lawson's time he could take and pillage, and then sink
a whole ship in the Streights, and Coventry say nothing to it; that my
Lord Arlington is his fast friend; that the Chancellor is cold to him,
and though I told him that I and the world do take my Lord Chancellor,
in his speech the other day, to have said as much as could be wished,
yet he thinks he did not. That my Lord Chancellor do from hence begin to
be cold to him, because of his seeing him and Arlington so great:
that nothing at Court is minded but faction and pleasure, and nothing
intended of general good to the kingdom by anybody heartily; so that he
believes with me, in a little time confusion will certainly come over
all the nation. He told me how a design was carried on a while ago, for
the Duke of Yorke to raise an army in the North, and to be the Generall
of it, and all this without the knowledge or advice of the Duke of
Albemarle, which when he come to know, he was so vexed, they were fain
to let it fall to content him: that his matching with the family of Sir
G. Carteret do make the difference greater between Coventry and him,
they being enemies; that the Chancellor did, as every body else, speak
well of me the other day, but yet was, at the Committee for Tangier,
angry that I should offer to suffer a bill of exchange to be protested.
So my Lord did bid me take heed, for that I might easily suppose I
could not want enemies, no more than others. In all he speaks with the
greatest trust and love and confidence in what I say or do, that a man
can do. After this discourse ended we sat down to dinner and mighty
merry, among other things, at the Bill brought into the House to make
it felony to break bulke, which, as my Lord says well, will make that
no prizes shall be taken, or, if taken, shall be sunke after plundering;
and the Act for the method of gathering this last L1,250,000 now voted,
and how paid wherein are several strange imperfections. After dinner
my Lord by a ketch down to Erith, where the Bezan was, it blowing these
last two days and now both night and day very hard southwardly, so that
it has certainly drove the Dutch off the coast. My Lord being gone I
to the office, and there find Captain Ferrers, who tells me his wife is
c