, we having not now received one penny for any
service in many weeks, and none in view to receive, saving for paying of
some seamen's wages. At noon sent to by my Lord Bruncker to speak with
him, and it was to dine with him and his Lady Williams (which I have not
now done in many months at their own table) and Mr. Wren, who is come to
dine with them, the first time he hath been at the office since his being
the Duke of York's Secretary. Here we sat and eat and talked and of some
matters of the office, but his discourse is as yet but weak in that
matter, and no wonder, he being new in it, but I fear he will not go about
understanding with the impatience that Sir W. Coventry did. Having dined,
I away, and with my wife and Mercer, set my wife down at the 'Change, and
the other at White Hall, and I to St. James's, where we all met, and did
our usual weekly business with the Duke of York. But, Lord! methinks both
he and we are mighty flat and dull over what we used to be, when Sir W.
Coventry was among us. Thence I into St. James's Park, and there met Mr.
Povy; and he and I to walk an hour or more in the Pell Mell, talking of
the times. He tells me, among other things, that this business of the
Chancellor do breed a kind of inward distance between the King and the
Duke of York, and that it cannot be avoided; for though the latter did at
first move it through his folly, yet he is made to see that he is wounded
by it, and is become much a less man than he was, and so will be: but he
tells me that they are, and have always been, great dissemblers one
towards another; and that their parting heretofore in France is never to
be thoroughly reconciled between them. He tells me that he believes there
is no such thing like to be, as a composition with my Lady Castlemayne,
and that she shall be got out of the way before the Parliament comes; for
he says she is as high as ever she was, though he believes the King is as
weary of her as is possible, and would give any thing to remove her, but
he is so weak in his passion that he dare not do it; that he do believe
that my Lord Chancellor will be doing some acts in the Parliament which
shall render him popular; and that there are many people now do speak
kindly of him that did not before; but that, if he do do this, it must
provoke the King, and that party that removed him. He seems to doubt what
the King of France will do, in case an accommodation shall be made between
Spain and him f