n that side, which will be very good, and do good service. So
to the chaine, and there saw it fast at the end on Upnor side of the
River; very fast, and borne up upon the several stages across the River;
and where it is broke nobody can tell me. I went on shore on Upnor side
to look upon the end of the chaine; and caused the link to be measured,
and it was six inches and one-fourth in circumference. They have burned
the Crane House that was to hawl it taught. It seems very remarkable to
me, and of great honour to the Dutch, that those of them that did go on
shore to Gillingham, though they went in fear of their lives, and were
some of them killed; and, notwithstanding their provocation at Schelling,
yet killed none of our people nor plundered their houses, but did take
some things of easy carriage, and left the rest, and not a house burned;
and, which is to our eternal disgrace, that what my Lord Douglas's men,
who come after them, found there, they plundered and took all away; and
the watermen that carried us did further tell us, that our own soldiers
are far more terrible to those people of the country-towns than the Dutch
themselves. We were told at the batteries, upon my seeing of the
field-guns that were there, that, had they come a day sooner, they had
been able to have saved all; but they had no orders, and lay lingering
upon the way, and did not come forward for want of direction.
Commissioner Pett's house was all unfurnished, he having carried away all
his goods. I met with no satisfaction whereabouts the chaine was broke,
but do confess I met with nobody that I could well expect to have
satisfaction [from], it being Sunday; and the officers of the Yard most of
them abroad, or at the Hill house, at the pay of the Chest, which they did
make use of to day to do part in. Several complaints, I hear, of the
Monmouth's coming away too soon from the chaine, where she was placed with
the two guard-ships to secure it; and Captain Robert Clerke, my friend, is
blamed for so doing there, but I hear nothing of him at London about it;
but Captain Brookes's running aground with the "Sancta Maria," which was
one of the three ships that were ordered to be sunk to have dammed up the
River at the chaine, is mightily cried against, and with reason, he being
the chief man to approve of the abilities of other men, and the other two
slips did get safe thither and he run aground; but yet I do hear that
though he be blameable, yet