ry body do think that there is
something extraordinary that keeps us so long from the news of the peace
being ratified, which the King and the Duke of York have expected these
six days. He gone, my wife and I and Mrs. Turner walked in the garden a
good while till 9 at night, and then parted, and I home to supper and to
read a little (which I cannot refrain, though I have all the reason in
the world to favour my eyes, which every day grow worse and worse by
over-using them), and then to bed.

20th. Up, and to my chamber to set down my journall for the last three
days, and then to the office, where busy all the morning. At noon home
to dinner, and then with my wife abroad, set her down at the Exchange,
and I to St. James's, where find Sir W. Coventry alone, and fell to
discourse of retrenchments; and thereon he tells how he hath already
propounded to the Lords Committee of the Councils how he would have the
Treasurer of the Navy a less man, that might not sit at the Board, but
be subject to the Board. He would have two Controllers to do his work
and two Surveyors, whereof one of each to take it by turns to reside at
Portsmouth and Chatham by a kind of rotation; he would have but only one
Clerk of the Acts. He do tell me he hath propounded how the charge of
the Navy in peace shall come within L200,000, by keeping out twenty-four
ships in summer, and ten in the winter. And several other particulars
we went over of retrenchment: and I find I must provide some things to
offer that I may be found studious to lessen the King's charge. By and
by comes my Lord Bruncker, and then we up to the Duke of York, and there
had a hearing of our usual business, but no money to be heard of--no,
not L100 upon the most pressing service that can be imagined of bringing
in the King's timber from Whittlewood, while we have the utmost want of
it, and no credit to provide it elsewhere, and as soon as we had done
with the Duke of York, Sir W. Coventry did single [out] Sir W. Pen and
me, and desired us to lend the King some money, out of the prizes we
have taken by Hogg. He did not much press it, and we made but a merry
answer thereto; but I perceive he did ask it seriously, and did tell us
that there never was so much need of it in the world as now, we being
brought to the lowest straits that can be in the world. This troubled me
much. By and by Sir W. Batten told me that he heard how Carcasse do now
give out that he will hang me, among the rest of