will venture all to make their fortunes better:  that Sir Thomas Osborne is a beggar, having 11 of L1200 a-year, but owes above L10,000.  The Duke of Buckingham’s condition is shortly this:  that he hath about L19,600 a-year, of which he pays away about L7,000 a-year in interest, about L2000 in fee-farm rents to the King, about L6000 wages and pensions, and the rest to live upon, and pay taxes for the whole.  Wren says, that for the Duke of York to stir in this matter, as his quality might justify, would but make all things worse, and that therefore he must bend, and suffer all, till time works it out:  that he fears they will sacrifice the Church, and that the King will take anything, and so he will hold up his head a little longer, and then break in pieces.  But Sir W. Coventry did today mightily magnify my late Lord Treasurer, for a wise and solid, though infirm man:  and, among other things, that when he hath said it was impossible in nature to find this or that sum of money, and my Lord Chancellor hath made sport of it, and tell the King that when my Lord hath said it [was] impossible, yet he hath made shift to find it, and that was by Sir G. Carteret’s getting credit, my Lord did once in his hearing say thus, which he magnifies as a great saying—­that impossible would be found impossible at last; meaning that the King would run himself out, beyond all his credit and funds, and then we should too late find it impossible; which is, he says, now come to pass.  For that Sir W. Coventry says they could borrow what money they would, if they had assignments, and funds to secure it with, which before they had enough of, and then must spend it as if it would never have an end.  From White Hall to my cozen Turner’s, and there took up my wife; and so to my uncle Wight’s, and there sat and supped, and talked pretty merry, and then walked home, and to bed.

15th.  Up, and with Tom to White Hall; and there at a Committee of Tangier, where a great instance of what a man may lose by the neglect of a friend:  Povy never had such an opportunity of passing his accounts, the Duke of York being there, and everybody well disposed, and in expectation of them; but my Lord Ashly, on whom he relied, and for whose sake this day was pitched on, that he might be sure to be there, among the rest of his friends, staid too long, till the Duke of York and the company thought unfit to stay longer and so the day lost, and God knows when he will ever have so good a one again, as long as he lives; and this was the man of the whole company that he hath made the most interest to gain, and now most depended upon him.  So up and down the house a while, and then to the plaisterer’s, and there saw the figure of my face taken from the mould:  and it is most admirably like, and I will have another made, before I take it away, and therefore I away and to the Temple, and thence to my cozen Turner’s, where, having the last night been told by her that she had drawn me for her Valentine, I did this day call at the New