I like myself mightily in it, and so
do my wife. Then, being dressed, to church; and after church pulled my
Lady Pen and Mrs. Markham into my house to dinner, and Sir J. Minnes
he got Mrs. Pegg along with him. I had a good dinner for them, and very
merry; and after dinner to the waterside, and so, it being very cold,
to White Hall, and was mighty fearfull of an ague, my vest being new and
thin, and the coat cut not to meet before upon my breast. Here I waited
in the gallery till the Council was up, and among others did speak
with Mr. Cooling, my Lord Chamberlain's secretary, who tells me my Lord
Generall is become mighty low in all people's opinion, and that he hath
received several slurs from the King and Duke of York. The people at
Court do see the difference between his and the Prince's management, and
my Lord Sandwich's. That this business which he is put upon of crying
out against the Catholiques and turning them out of all employment, will
undo him, when he comes to turn-out the officers out of the Army, and
this is a thing of his own seeking. That he is grown a drunken sot, and
drinks with nobody but Troutbecke, whom nobody else will keep company
with. Of whom he told me this story: That once the Duke of Albemarle in
his drink taking notice as of a wonder that Nan Hide should ever come to
be Duchesse of York, "Nay," says Troutbecke, "ne'er wonder at that; for
if you will give me another bottle of wine, I will tell you as great,
if not greater, a miracle." And what was that, but that our dirty Besse
(meaning his Duchesse) should come to be Duchesse of Albemarle? Here we
parted, and so by and by the Council rose, and out comes Sir G. Carteret
and Sir W. Coventry, and they and my Lord Bruncker and I went to Sir G.
Carteret's lodgings, there to discourse about some money demanded by
Sir W. Warren, and having done that broke up. And Sir G. Carteret and
I alone together a while, where he shows a long letter, all in cipher,
from my Lord Sandwich to him. The contents he hath not yet found out,
but he tells me that my Lord is not sent for home, as several people
have enquired after of me. He spoke something reflecting upon me in the
business of pursers, that their present bad behaviour is what he did
foresee, and had convinced me of, and yet when it come last year to
be argued before the Duke of York I turned and said as the rest did. I
answered nothing to it, but let it go, and so to other discourse of
the ill state of th