that keeps us so long from the news of the peace being
ratified, which the King and the Duke of York have expected these six
days. He gone, my wife and I and Mrs. Turner walked in the garden a good
while till 9 at night, and then parted, and I home to supper and to read a
little (which I cannot refrain, though I have all the reason in the world
to favour my eyes, which every day grow worse and worse by over-using
them), and then to bed.

20th. Up, and to my chamber to set down my journall for the last three
days, and then to the office, where busy all the morning. At noon home to
dinner, and then with my wife abroad, set her down at the Exchange, and I
to St. James's, where find Sir W. Coventry alone, and fell to discourse of
retrenchments; and thereon he tells how he hath already propounded to the
Lords Committee of the Councils how he would have the Treasurer of the
Navy a less man, that might not sit at the Board, but be subject to the
Board. He would have two Controllers to do his work and two Surveyors,
whereof one of each to take it by turns to reside at Portsmouth and
Chatham by a kind of rotation; he would have but only one Clerk of the
Acts. He do tell me he hath propounded how the charge of the Navy in
peace shall come within L200,000, by keeping out twenty-four ships in
summer, and ten in the winter. And several other particulars we went over
of retrenchment: and I find I must provide some things to offer that I may
be found studious to lessen the King's charge. By and by comes my Lord
Bruncker, and then we up to the Duke of York, and there had a hearing of
our usual business, but no money to be heard of--no, not L100 upon the
most pressing service that can be imagined of bringing in the King's
timber from Whittlewood, while we have the utmost want of it, and no
credit to provide it elsewhere, and as soon as we had done with the Duke
of York, Sir W. Coventry did single [out] Sir W. Pen and me, and desired
us to lend the King some money, out of the prizes we have taken by Hogg.
He did not much press it, and we made but a merry answer thereto; but I
perceive he did ask it seriously, and did tell us that there never was so
much need of it in the world as now, we being brought to the lowest
straits that can be in the world. This troubled me much. By and by Sir W.
Batten told me that he heard how Carcasse do now give out that he will
hang me, among the rest of his threats of him and Pen, which is the first