lost. He tells me, speaking of the horrid effeminacy of the King, that
the King hath taken ten times more care and pains in making friends
between my Lady Castlemayne and Mrs. Stewart, when they have fallen out,
than ever he did to save his kingdom; nay, that upon any falling out
between my Lady Castlemayne's nurse and her woman, my Lady hath often
said she would make the King to make them friends, and they would be
friends and be quiet; which the King hath been fain to do: that the King
is, at this day, every night in Hyde Park with the Duchesse of Monmouth,
or with my Lady Castlemaine: that he [Povy] is concerned of late by my
Lord Arlington in the looking after some buildings that he is about in
Norfolke, where my Lord is laying out a great deal of money; and that
he, Mr. Povy, considering the unsafeness of laying out money at such a
time as this, and, besides, the enviousness of the particular county,
as well as all the kingdom, to find him building and employing workmen,
while all the ordinary people of the country are carried down to the
seasides for securing the land, he thought it becoming him to go to my
Lord Arlington (Sir Thomas Clifford by), and give it as his advice to
hold his hands a little; but my Lord would not, but would have him go
on, and so Sir Thomas Clifford advised also, which one would think, if
he were a statesman worth a fart should be a sign of his foreseeing that
all shall do well. But I do forbear concluding any such thing from them.
He tells me that there is not so great confidence between any two men
of power in the nation at this day, that he knows of, as between my Lord
Arlington and Sir Thomas Clifford; and that it arises by accident only,
there being no relation nor acquaintance between them, but only Sir
Thomas Clifford's coming to him, and applying himself to him for
favours, when he come first up to town to be a Parliament-man. He tells
me that he do not think there is anything in the world for us possibly
to be saved by but the King of France's generousnesse to stand by us
against the Dutch, and getting us a tolerable peace, it may be, upon our
giving him Tangier and the islands he hath taken, and other things
he shall please to ask. He confirms me in the several grounds I have
conceived of fearing that we shall shortly fall into mutinys and
outrages among ourselves, and that therefore he, as a Treasurer, and
therefore much more myself, I say, as being not only a Treasurer but an
of