o stand between him and harm: whereas now there is only
my Lord Arlington, and he is now down, so that all their fury is placed
upon him but that he did tell the King, when he first moved it, that,
if he thought the laying of him, W. Coventry, aside, would at all
facilitate the removing of the Chancellor, he would most willingly
submit to it, whereupon the King did command him to try the Duke of York
about it, and persuade him to it, which he did, by the King's command,
undertake, and compass, and the Duke of York did own his consent to
the King, but afterwards was brought to be of another mind for the
Chancellor, and now is displeased with him, and [so is] the Duchesse, so
that she will not see him; but he tells me the Duke of York seems pretty
kind, and hath said that he do believe that W. Coventry did mean
well, and do it only out of judgment. He tells me that he never was an
intriguer in his life, nor will be, nor of any combination of persons
to set up this, or fling down that, nor hath, in his own business, this
Parliament, spoke to three members to say any thing for him, but will
stand upon his own defence, and will stay by it, and thinks that he
is armed against all they can [say], but the old business of selling
places, and in that thinks they cannot hurt him. However, I do find him
mighty willing to have his name used as little as he can, and he was
glad when I did deliver him up a letter of his to me, which did give
countenance to the discharging of men by ticket at Chatham, which is now
coming in question; and wherein, I confess, I am sorry to find him so
tender of appearing, it being a thing not only good and fit, all that
was done in it, but promoted and advised by him. But he thinks the House
is set upon wresting anything to his prejudice that they can pick up. He
tells me he did never, as a great many have, call the Chancellor rogue
and knave, and I know not what; but all that he hath said, and will
stand by, is, that his counsels were not good, nor the manner of his
managing of things. I suppose he means suffering the King to run in
debt; for by and by the King walking in the parke, with a great crowd
of his idle people about him, I took occasion to say that it was a
sorry thing to be a poor King, and to have others to come to correct
the faults of his own servants, and that this was it that brought us all
into this condition. He answered that he would never be a poor King, and
then the other would mend o