Diary, December 1667 | Page 5

had five or six.

3rd. Up, by candlelight, the only time I think I have done so this winter,
and a coach being got over night, I to Sir W. Coventry's, the first time I
have seen him at his new house since he come to lodge there. He tells
me of the vote for none of the House to be of the Commission for the
Bill of Accounts; which he thinks is so great a disappointment to Birch
and others that expected to be of it, that he thinks, could it have been
[fore]seen, there would not have been any Bill at all. We hope it will be
the better for all that are to account; it being likely that the men, being
few, and not of the House, will hear reason. The main business I went
about was about. Gilsthrop, Sir W. Batten's clerk; who, being upon his
death-bed, and now dead, hath offered to make discoveries of the
disorders of the Navy and of L65,000 damage to the King: which made
mighty noise in the Commons' House; and members appointed to go to
him, which they did; but nothing to the purpose got from him, but

complaints of false musters, and ships being refitted with victuals and
stores at Plymouth, after they come fitted from other ports; but all this
to no purpose, nor more than we know, and will owne. But the best is,
that this loggerhead should say this, that understands nothing of the
Navy, nor ever would; and hath particularly blemished his master by
name among us. I told Sir W. Coventry of my letter to Sir R. Brookes,
and his answer to me. He advises me, in what I write to him, to be as
short as I can, and obscure, saving in things fully plain; for all that he
do is to make mischief; and that the greatest wisdom in dealing with the
Parliament in the world is to say little, and let them get out what they
can by force: which I shall observe. He declared to me much of his
mind to be ruled by his own measures, and not to go so far as many
would have him to the ruin of my Lord Chancellor, and for which they
do endeavour to do what they can against [Sir] W. Coventry. "But,"
says he, "I have done my do in helping to get him out of the
administration of things, for which he is not fit; but for his life or estate
I will have nothing to say to it: besides that, my duty to my master the
Duke of York is such, that I will perish before I will do any thing to
displease or disoblige him, where the very necessity of the kingdom do
not in my judgment call me." Thence I home and to the office, where
my Lord Anglesey, and all the discourse was yesterday's vote in the
Commons, wherein he told us that, should the Lords yield to what the
Commons would have in this matter, it were to make them worse than
any justice of Peace (whereas they are the highest Court in the
Kingdom) that they cannot be judges whether an offender be to be
committed or bailed, which every justice of Peace do do, and then he
showed me precedents plain in their defence. At noon home to dinner,
and busy all the afternoon, and at night home, and there met W.
Batelier, who tells me the first great news that my Lord Chancellor is
fled this day. By and by to Sir W. Pen's, where Sir R. Ford and he and I
met, with Mr. Young and Lewes, about our accounts with my Lady
Batten, which prove troublesome, and I doubt will prove to our loss.
But here I hear the whole that my Lord Chancellor is gone, and left a
paper behind him for the House of Lords, telling them the reason of
him retiring, complaining of a design for his ruin. But the paper I must
get: only the thing at present is great, and will put the King and
Commons to some new counsels certainly. So home to supper and to

bed. Sir W. Pen I find in much trouble this evening, having been called
to the Committee this afternoon, about the business of prizes. Sir
Richard Ford told us this evening an odd story of the basenesse of the
late Lord Mayor, Sir W. Bolton, in cheating the poor of the City, out of
the collections made for the people that were burned, of L1800; of
which he can give no account, and in which he hath forsworn himself
plainly, so as the Court of Aldermen have sequestered him from their
Court till he do bring in an