19th.  Waked with a very high wind, and said to my wife, “I pray God I hear not of the death of any great person, this wind is so high!” fearing that the Queen might be dead.  So up; and going by coach with Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes to St. James’s, they tell me that Sir W. Compton, who it is true had been a little sickly for a week or fortnight, but was very well upon Friday at night last at the Tangier Committee with us, was dead—­died yesterday:  at which I was most exceedingly surprised, he being, and so all the world saying that he was, one of the worthyest men and best officers of State now in England; and so in my conscience he was:  of the best temper, valour, abilities of mind, integrity, birth, fine person, and diligence of any one man he hath left behind him in the three kingdoms; and yet not forty years old, or if so, that is all.

[Sir William Compton (1625-1663) was knighted at Oxford, December 12th, 1643.  He was called by Cromwell “the sober young man and the godly cavalier.”  After the Restoration he was M.P. for Cambridge (1661), and appointed Master of the Ordnance.  He died in Drury Lane, suddenly, as stated in the text, and was buried at Compton Wynyates, Warwickshire.]

I find the sober men of the Court troubled for him; and yet not so as to hinder or lessen their mirth, talking, laughing, and eating, drinking, and doing every thing else, just as if there was no such thing, which is as good an instance for me hereafter to judge of death, both as to the unavoidableness, suddenness, and little effect of it upon the spirits of others, let a man be never so high, or rich, or good; but that all die alike, no more matter being made of the death of one than another, and that even to die well, the praise of it is not considerable in the world, compared to the many in the world that know not nor make anything of it, nor perhaps to them (unless to one that like this poor gentleman, who is one of a thousand, there nobody speaking ill of him) that will speak ill of a man.  Coming to St. James’s, I hear that the Queen did sleep five hours pretty well to-night, and that she waked and gargled her mouth, and to sleep again; but that her pulse beats fast, beating twenty to the King’s or my Lady Suffolk’s eleven; but not so strong as it was.  It seems she was so ill as to be shaved and pidgeons put to her feet, and to have the extreme unction given her by the priests, who were so long about it that the doctors were angry.  The King, they all say; is most fondly disconsolate for her, and weeps by her, which makes her weep;

["The queen was given over by her physicians, . . . , and the good nature of the king was much affected with the situation in which he saw! a princess whom, though he did not love her, yet he greatly esteemed.  She loved him tenderly, and thinking that it was the last time she should ever speak to him, she told him ’That the concern he showed for her death was enough