t L3, and after
many demands cannot get it. Mrs. Turner says she do believe their coming
here is only out of a belief of getting purchase by it, and that their
servants (which was wittily said of her touching his clerks) do act only
as privateers, no purchase, no pay. And in my conscience she is in the
right. Then we fell to talk of Sir W. Pen, and his family and rise. She
[Mrs. Turner] says that he was a pityfull [fellow] when she first knew
them; that his lady was one of the sourest, dirty women, that ever she
saw; that they took two chambers, one over another, for themselves and
child, in Tower Hill; that for many years together they eat more meals at
her house than at their own; did call brothers and sisters the husbands
and wives; that her husband was godfather to one, and she godmother to
another (this Margaret) of their children, by the same token that she was
fain to write with her own hand a letter to Captain Twiddy, to stand for a
godfather for her; that she brought my Lady, who then was a dirty
slattern, with her stockings hanging about her heels, so that afterwards
the people of the whole Hill did say that Mrs. Turner had made Mrs. Pen a
gentlewoman, first to the knowledge of my Lady Vane, Sir Henry's lady, and
him to the knowledge of most of the great people that then he sought to,
and that in short his rise hath been his giving of large bribes, wherein,
and she agrees with my opinion and knowledge before therein, he is very
profuse. This made him General; this got him out of the Tower when he was
in; and hath brought him into what he is now, since the King's coming in:
that long ago, indeed, he would drink the King's health privately with Mr.
Turner; but that when he saw it fit to turn Roundhead, and was offered by
Mr. Turner to drink the King's health, he answered "No;" he was changed,
and now, he that would make him drink the King's health, or any health but
the Protector's and the State's, or to that purpose, he would be the first
man should sheath his sword in his guts. That at the King's coming in, he
did send for her husband, and told him what a great man Sir W. Coventry
was like to be, and that he having all the records in his hands of the
Navy, if he would transcribe what was of most present use of the practice
of the Navy, and give them him to give Sir W. Coventry from him, it would
undoubtedly do his business of getting him a principal officer's place;
that her husband was at L5 charge to get