heir fees, which makes this great want: for, whether
the King can get it or no, they will run away at the quarter's end with
what he hath had, let the King get more as he can. All the company gone,
Sir G. Carteret and I to talk: and it is pretty to observe how already he
says that he did always look upon the Chancellor indeed as his friend,
though he never did do him any service at all, nor ever got any thing by
him, nor was he a man apt, and that, I think, is true, to do any man any
kindness of his own nature; though I do know that he was believed by all
the world to be the greatest support of Sir G. Carteret with the King of
any man in England: but so little is now made of it! He observes that my
Lord Sandwich will lose a great friend in him; and I think so too, my Lord
Hinchingbroke being about a match calculated purely out of respect to my
Lord Chancellor's family. By and by Sir G. Carteret, and Townsend, and I,
to consider of an answer to the Commissioners of the Treasury about my
Lord Sandwich's profits in the Wardrobe; which seem, as we make them, to
be very small, not L1000 a-year; but only the difference in measure at
which he buys and delivers out to the King, and then 6d. in the pound from
the tradesmen for what money he receives for him; but this, it is
believed, these Commissioners will endeavour to take away. From him I
went to see a great match at tennis, between Prince Rupert and one Captain
Cooke, against Bab. May and the elder Chichly; where the King was, and
Court; and it seems are the best players at tennis in the nation. But
this puts me in mind of what I observed in the morning, that the King,
playing at tennis, had a steele-yard carried to him, and I was told it was
to weigh him after he had done playing; and at noon Mr. Ashburnham told me
that it is only the King's curiosity, which he usually hath of weighing
himself before and after his play, to see how much he loses in weight by
playing: and this day he lost 4 lbs. Thence home and took my wife out to
Mile End Green, and there I drank, and so home, having a very fine
evening. Then home, and I to Sir W. Batten and [Sir] W. Pen, and there
discoursed of Sir W. Coventry's leaving the Duke of York, and Mr. Wren's
succeeding him. They told me both seriously, that they had long cut me
out for Secretary to the Duke of York, if ever [Sir] W. Coventry left him;
which, agreeing with what I have heard from other hands heretofore, do
make me not only thi