she was now in her second or third mourning, and pretty pleasant in her looks.  By and by the Council rises, and Sir W. Coventry comes out; and he and I went aside, and discoursed of much business of the Navy; and afterwards took his coach, and to Hide-Parke, he and I alone:  there we had much talke.  First, he started a discourse of a talke he hears about the towne, which, says he, is a very bad one, and fit to be suppressed, if we knew how which is, the comparing of the successe of the last year with that of this; saying that that was good, and that bad.  I was as sparing in speaking as I could, being jealous of him and myself also, but wished it could be stopped; but said I doubted it could not otherwise than by the fleete’s being abroad again, and so finding other worke for men’s minds and discourse.  Then to discourse of himself, saying, that he heard that he was under the lash of people’s discourse about the Prince’s not having notice of the Dutch being out, and for him to comeback again, nor the Duke of Albemarle notice that the Prince was sent for back again:  to which he told me very particularly how careful he was the very same night that it was resolved to send for the Prince back, to cause orders to be writ, and waked the Duke, who was then in bed, to sign them; and that they went by expresse that very night, being the Wednesday night before the fight, which begun on the Friday; and that for sending them by the post expresse, and not by gentlemen on purpose, he made a sport of it, and said, I knew of none to send it with, but would at least have lost more time in fitting themselves out, than any diligence of theirs beyond that of the ordinary post would have recovered.  I told him that this was not so much the towne talke as the reason of dividing the fleete.  To this he told me he ought not to say much; but did assure me in general that the proposition did first come from the fleete, and the resolution not being prosecuted with orders so soon as the Generall thought fit, the Generall did send Sir Edward Spragge up on purpose for them; and that there was nothing in the whole business which was not done with the full consent and advice of the Duke of Albemarle.

But he did adde (as the Catholiques call ’le secret de la Masse’), that Sir Edward Spragge—­who had even in Sir Christopher Mings’s time put in to be the great favourite of the Prince, but much more now had a mind to be the great man with him, and to that end had a mind to have the Prince at a distance from the Duke of Albemarle, that they might be doing something alone—­did, as he believed, put on this business of dividing the fleete, and that thence it came.