y Lord Oxford and the Duke of Monmouth in a hackney-coach
with two footmen in the Parke, with their robes on; which is a most
scandalous thing, so as all gravity may be said to be lost among us. By
and by we discoursed of Sir Thomas Clifford, whom I took for a very rich
and learned man, and of the great family of that name. He tells me he is
only a man of about seven-score pounds a-year, of little learning more
than the law of a justice of peace, which he knows well: a parson's son,
got to be burgess in a little borough in the West, and here fell into
the acquaintance of my Lord Arlington, whose creature he is, and never
from him; a man of virtue, and comely, and good parts enough; and hath
come into his place with a great grace, though with a great skip over
the heads of a great many, as Chichly and Duncum, and some Lords that
did expect it. By the way, he tells me, that of all the great men of
England there is none that endeavours more to raise those that he takes
into favour than my Lord Arlington; and that, on that score, he is much
more to be made one's patron than my Lord Chancellor, who never did,
nor never will do, any thing, but for money! After having this long
discourse we parted, about one of the clock, and so away by water home,
calling upon Michell, whose wife and girle are pretty well, and I home
to dinner, and after dinner with Sir W. Batten to White Hall, there to
attend the Duke of York before council, where we all met at his closet
and did the little business we had, and here he did tell us how the King
of France is intent upon his design against Flanders, and hath drawn up
a remonstrance of the cause of the war, and appointed the 20th of the
next month for his rendezvous, and himself to prepare for the campaign
the 30th, so that this, we are in hopes, will keep him in employment.
Turenne is to be his general. Here was Carcasses business unexpectedly
moved by him, but what was done therein appears in my account of his
case in writing by itself. Certain newes of the Dutch being abroad on
our coast with twenty-four great ships. This done Sir W. Batten and I
back again to London, and in the way met my Lady Newcastle going with
her coaches and footmen all in velvet: herself, whom I never saw before,
as I have heard her often described, for all the town-talk is now-a-days
of her extravagancies, with her velvetcap, her hair about her ears; many
black patches, because of pimples about her mouth; naked-necked, w