n of an ill prince, but I think things are not settled
enough for it at present. And the Court may want a majority upon a
pinch. Nite deelest logues. Rove Pdfr.

March 1. I went into the City to inquire after poor Stratford,(13) who
has put himself a prisoner into the Queen's Bench, for which his friends
blame him much, because his creditors designed to be very easy with him.
He grasped at too many things together, and that was his ruin. There
is one circumstance relative to Lieutenant-General Meredith(14) that
is very melancholy: Meredith was turned out of all his employments
last year, and had about 10,000 pounds left to live on. Stratford, upon
friendship, desired he might have the management of it for Meredith, to
put it into the stocks and funds for the best advantage, and now he
has lost it all. You have heard me often talk of Stratford; we were
class-fellows at school and university. I dined with some merchants,
his friends, to-day, and they said they expected his breaking this good
while. I gave him notice of a treaty of peace, while it was a secret, of
which he might have made good use, but that helped to ruin him; for he
gave money, reckoning there would be actually a peace by this time, and
consequently stocks rise high. Ford narrowly 'scaped losing 500 pounds
by him, and so did I too. Nite, my two deelest rives MD.

2. Morning. I was wakened at three this morning, my man and the people
of the house telling me of a great fire in the Haymarket. I slept again,
and two hours after my man came in again, and told me it was my poor
brother Sir William Wyndham's(15) house burnt, and that two maids,
leaping out of an upper room to avoid the fire, both fell on their
heads, one of them upon the iron spikes before the door, and both lay
dead in the streets. It is supposed to have been some carelessness of
one or both those maids. The Duke of Ormond was there helping to put
out the fire. Brother Wyndham gave 6,000 pounds but a few months ago
for that house, as he told me, and it was very richly furnished. I shall
know more particulars at night. He married Lady Catherine Seymour,
the Duke of Somerset's daughter; you know her, I believe.--At night.
Wyndham's young child escaped very narrowly; Lady Catherine escaped
barefoot; they all went to Northumberland House. Mr. Brydges's(16)
house, at next door, is damaged much, and was like to be burnt. Wyndham
has lost above 10,000 pounds by this accident; his lady above a thousand