o finish my journall for
five days past, and so abroad and walked to White Hall, calling in at
Somerset House Chapel, and also at the Spanish Embassador's at York
House, and there did hear a little masse: and so to White Hall; and
there the King being gone to Chapel, I to walk all the morning in
the Park, where I met Mr. Wren; and he and I walked together in the
Pell-Mell, it being most summer weather that ever was seen: and here
talking of several things: of the corruption of the Court, and how unfit
it is for ingenious men, and himself particularly, to live in it, where
a man cannot live but he must spend, and cannot get suitably, without
breach of his honour: and did thereupon tell me of the basest thing of
my Lord Barkeley, one of the basest things that ever was heard of of
a man, which was this: how the Duke of York's Commissioners do let
his wine-licenses at a bad rate, and being offered a better, they did
persuade the Duke of York to give some satisfaction to the former to
quit it, and let it to the latter, which being done, my Lord Barkeley
did make the bargain for the former to have L1500 a-year to quit it;
whereof, since, it is come to light that they were to have but L800
and himself L700, which the Duke of York hath ever since for some years
paid, though this second bargain hath been broken, and the Duke of York
lost by it, [half] of what the first was. He told me that there hath
been a seeming accommodation between the Duke of York and the Duke of
Buckingham and Lord Arlington, the two latter desiring it; but yet that
there is not true agreement between them, but they do labour to bring
in all new creatures into play, and the Duke of York do oppose it, as
particularly in this of Sir D. Gawden. Thence, he gone, I to the Queen's
Chapel, and there heard some good singing; and so to White Hall, and saw
the King and Queen at dinner and thence with Sir Stephen Fox to
dinner: and the Cofferer with us; and there mighty kind usage, and good
discourse. Thence spent all the afternoon walking in the Park, and
then in the evening at Court, on the Queen's side; and there met Mr.
Godolphin, who tells me that the news, is true we heard yesterday, of my
Lord Sandwich's being come to Mount's Bay, in Cornwall, and so I heard
this afternoon at Mrs. Pierce's, whom I went to make a short visit to.
This night, in the Queen's drawing-room, my Lord Brouncker told me the
difference that is now between the three Embassadors here, the V