esolution, if he be dead, and that there is but
few old sober men in the fleete, and if these few of the Flags that are so
should die, he fears some other gentlemen captains will get in, and then
what a council we shall have, God knows. He told me how he is disturbed to
hear the commanders at sea called cowards here on shore, and that he was
yesterday concerned publiquely at a dinner to defend them, against
somebody that said that not above twenty of them fought as they should do,
and indeed it is derived from the Duke of Albemarle himself, who wrote so
to the King and Duke, and that he told them how they fought four days, two
of them with great disadvantage. The Count de Guiche, who was on board De
Ruyter, writing his narrative home in French of the fight, do lay all the
honour that may be upon the English courage above the Dutch, and that he
himself [Sir W. Coventry] was sent down from the King and Duke of Yorke
after the fight, to pray them to spare none that they thought had not done
their parts, and that they had removed but four, whereof Du Tell is one,
of whom he would say nothing; but, it seems, the Duke of Yorke hath been
much displeased at his removal, and hath now taken him into his service,
which is a plain affront to the Duke of Albemarle; and two of the others,
Sir W. Coventry did speake very slenderly of their faults. Only the last,
which was old Teddiman, he says, is in fault, and hath little to excuse
himself with; and that, therefore, we should not be forward in condemning
men of want of courage, when the Generalls, who are both men of metal, and
hate cowards, and had the sense of our ill successe upon them (and by the
way must either let the world thinke it was the miscarriage of the
Captains or their owne conduct), have thought fit to remove no more of
them, when desired by the King and Duke of Yorke to do it, without respect
to any favour any of them can pretend to in either of them. At last we
concluded that we never can hope to beat the Dutch with such advantage as
now in number and force and a fleete in want of nothing, and he hath often
repeated now and at other times industriously that many of the Captains
have: declared that they want nothing, and again, that they did lie ten
days together at the Nore without demanding of any thing in the world but
men, and of them they afterward, when they went away, the generalls
themselves acknowledge that they have permitted several ships to carry
supernum