here, he expects, both for my Lord’s sake and his own (whose interest he wants) it will be best for him to be at home, where he will be well received by the King; he is sure of his service well accepted, though the business of Spain do fall by this peace.  He tells me my Lord Arlington hath done like a gentleman by him in all things.  He says, if my Lord [Sandwich] were here, he were the fittest man to be Lord Treasurer of any man in England; and he thinks it might be compassed; for he confesses that the King’s matters do suffer through the inability of this man, who is likely to die, and he will propound him to the King.  It will remove him from his place at sea, and the King will have a good place to bestow.  He says to me, that he could wish, when my Lord comes, that he would think fit to forbear playing, as a thing below him, and which will lessen him, as it do my Lord St. Albans, in the King’s esteem:  and as a great secret tells me that he hath made a match for my Lord Hinchingbroke to a daughter of my Lord Burlington’s, where there is a great alliance, L10,000 portion; a civil family, and relation to my Lord Chancellor, whose son hath married one of the daughters; and that my Lord Chancellor do take it with very great kindness, so that he do hold himself obliged by it.  My Lord Sandwich hath referred it to my Lord Crew, Sir G. Carteret, and Mr. Montagu, to end it.  My Lord Hinchingbroke and the lady know nothing yet of it.  It will, I think, be very happy.  Very glad of this discourse, I away mightily pleased with the confidence I have in this family, and so away, took up my wife, who was at her mother’s, and so home, where I settled to my chamber about my accounts, both Tangier and private, and up at it till twelve at night, with good success, when news is brought me that there is a great fire in Southwarke:  so we up to the leads, and then I and the boy down to the end of our, lane, and there saw it, it seeming pretty great, but nothing to the fire of London, that it made me think little of it.  We could at that distance see an engine play—­that is, the water go out, it being moonlight.  By and by, it begun to slacken, and then I home and to bed.

30th.  Up, and Mr. Madden come to speak with me, whom my people not knowing have made to wait long without doors, which vexed me.  Then comes Sir John Winter to discourse with me about the forest of Deane, and then about my Lord Treasurer, and asking me whether, as he had heard, I had not been cut for the stone, I took him to my closet, and there shewed it to him, of which he took the dimensions and had some discourse of it, and I believe will shew my Lord Treasurer it.  Thence to the office, where we sat all the morning, but little to do, and then to the ’Change, where for certain I hear, and the News book declares, a peace between France and Portugal.  Met here with Mr. Pierce, and he tells me the Duke of Cambridge is very ill and full of spots about his body, that Dr. Frazier knows not what to think of