by coach to St. James's, and there find Sir W. Coventry and Sir W. Pen
above stairs, and then we to discourse about making up our accounts
against the Parliament; and Sir W. Coventry did give us the best advice
he could for us to provide for our own justification, believing, as
everybody do, that they will fall heavily upon us all, though he lay all
upon want of money, only a little, he says (if the Parliament be in any
temper), may be laid upon themselves for not providing money sooner,
they being expressly and industriously warned thereof by him, he says,
even to the troubling them, that some of them did afterwards tell him
that he had frighted them. He says he do prepare to justify himself,
and that he hears that my Lord Chancellor, my Lord Arlington, the Vice
Chamberlain and himself are reported all up and down the Coffee houses
to be the four sacrifices that must be made to atone the people. Then we
to talk of the loss of all affection and obedience, now in the seamen,
so that all power is lost. He told us that he do concur in thinking that
want of money do do the most of it, but that that is not all, but the
having of gentlemen Captains, who discourage all Tarpaulins, and have
given out that they would in a little time bring it to that pass that a
Tarpaulin should not dare to aspire to more than to be a Boatswain or
a gunner. That this makes the Sea Captains to lose their own good
affections to the service, and to instil it into the seamen also, and
that the seamen do see it themselves and resent it; and tells us that
it is notorious, even to his bearing of great ill will at Court, that he
hath been the opposer of gentlemen Captains; and Sir W. Pen did put in,
and said that he was esteemed to have been the man that did instil it
into Sir W. Coventry, which Sir W. Coventry did owne also, and says that
he hath always told the Gentlemen Captains his opinion of them, and
that himself who had now served to the business of the sea 6 or 7 years
should know a little, and as much as them that had never almost been at
sea, and that yet he found himself fitter to be a Bishop or Pope than
to be a Sea-Commander, and so indeed he is. I begun to tell him of the
experience I had of the great brags made by Sir F. Hollis the other day,
and the little proof either of the command or interest he had in his
men, which Sir W. Pen seconded by saying Sir Fr. Hollis had told him
that there was not a pilot to be got the other day for his fir