ess, and the
old and wiser commanders nothing. So as Sir Thomas Teddiman (whom the
King and all the world speak well of) is mightily discontented, as being
wholly slighted. He says we lost more after the Prince come, than before
too. The Prince was so maimed, as to be forced to be towed home. He says
all the fleete confess their being chased home by the Dutch; and yet the
body of the Dutch that did it, was not above forty sayle at most. And
yet this put us into the fright, as to bring all our ships on ground. He
says, however, that the Duke of Albemarle is as high almost as ever,
and pleases himself to think that he hath given the Dutch their bellies
full, without sense of what he hath lost us; and talks how he knows now
the way to beat them. But he says, that even Smith himself, one of his
creatures, did himself condemn the late conduct from the beginning to
the end. He tells me further, how the Duke of Yorke is wholly given up
to his new mistresse, my Lady Denham, going at noon-day with all his
gentlemen with him to visit her in Scotland Yard; she declaring she will
not be his mistresse, as Mrs. Price, to go up and down the Privy-stairs,
but will be owned publicly; and so she is. Mr. Bruncker, it seems, was
the pimp to bring it about, and my Lady Castlemaine, who designs thereby
to fortify herself by the Duke; there being a falling-out the other
day between the King and her: on this occasion, the Queene, in ordinary
talke before the ladies in her drawing-room, did say to my Lady
Castlemaine that she feared the King did take cold, by staying so late
abroad at her house. She answered before them all, that he did not stay
so late abroad with her, for he went betimes thence (though he do not
before one, two, or three in the morning), but must stay somewhere else.
The King then coming in and overhearing, did whisper in the eare aside,
and told her she was a bold impertinent woman, and bid her to be gone
out of the Court, and not come again till he sent for, her; which she
did presently, and went to a lodging in the Pell Mell, and kept there
two or three days, and then sent to the King to know whether she might
send for her things away out of her house. The King sent to her, she
must first come and view them: and so she come, and the King went to
her, and all friends again. He tells me she did, in her anger, say she
would be even with the King, and print his letters to her. So putting
all together, we are and are like to be i