the country soldiers did first run at Sheerenesse, but that then my Lord Douglas’s men did run also; but it is excused that there was no defence for them towards the sea, that so the very beach did fly in their faces as the bullets come, and annoyed them, they having, after all this preparation of the officers of the ordnance, only done something towards the land, and nothing at all towards the sea.  The people here everywhere do speak very badly of Sir Edward Spragge, as not behaving himself as he should have done in that business, going away with the first, and that old Captain Pyne, who, I am here told, and no sooner, is Master-Gunner of England, was the last that staid there.  Thence by barge, it raining hard, down to the chaine; and in our way did see the sad wrackes of the poor “Royall Oake,” “James,” and “London;”

["The bottom of the ‘Royal James’ is got afloat, and those of the ‘Loyal London’ and ‘Royal Oak’ soon will be so.  Many men are at work to put Sheerness in a posture of defence, and a boom is being fitted over the river by Upnor Castle, which with the good fortifications will leave nothing to fear.”—­Calendar of State Papers, 1667, p. 285.]

and several other of our ships by us sunk, and several of the enemy’s, whereof three men-of-war that they could not get off, and so burned.  We did also see several dead bodies lie by the side of the water.  I do not see that Upnor Castle hath received any hurt by them, though they played long against it; and they themselves shot till they had hardly a gun left upon the carriages, so badly provided they were:  they have now made two batteries on 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,