back to White Hall, and there meeting my Lord Arlington, he, by I know not what kindness, offered to carry me along with him to my Lord Treasurer’s, whither, I told him, I was going.  I believe he had a mind to discourse of some Navy businesses, but Sir Thomas Clifford coming into the coach to us, we were prevented; which I was sorry for, for I had a mind to begin an acquaintance with him.  He speaks well, and hath pretty slight superficial parts, I believe.  He, in our going, talked much of the plain habit of the Spaniards; how the King and Lords themselves wear but a cloak of Colchester bayze, and the ladies mantles, in cold weather, of white flannell:  and that the endeavours frequently of setting up the manufacture of making these stuffs there have only been prevented by the Inquisition:  the English and Dutchmen that have been sent for to work, being taken with a Psalmbook or Testament, and so clapped up, and the house pulled down by the Inquisitors; and the greatest Lord in Spayne dare not say a word against it, if the word Inquisition be but mentioned.  At my Lord Treasurer’s ’light and parted with them, they going into Council, and I walked with Captain Cocke, who takes mighty notice of the differences growing in our office between Lord Bruncker and [Sir] W. Batten, and among others also, and I fear it may do us hurt, but I will keep out of them.  By and by comes Sir S. Fox, and he and I walked and talked together on many things, but chiefly want of money, and the straits the King brings himself and affairs into for want of it.  Captain Cocke did tell me what I must not forget:  that the answer of the Dutch, refusing The Hague for a place of treaty, and proposing the Boysse, Bredah, Bergen-op-Zoome, or Mastricht, was seemingly stopped by the Swede’s Embassador (though he did show it to the King, but the King would take no notice of it, nor does not) from being delivered to the King; and he hath wrote to desire them to consider better of it:  so that, though we know their refusal of the place, yet they know not that we know it, nor is the King obliged to show his sense of the affront.  That the Dutch are in very great straits, so as to be said to be not able to set out their fleete this year.  By and by comes Sir Robert Viner and my Lord Mayor to ask the King’s directions about measuring out the streets according to the new Act for building of the City, wherein the King is to be pleased.

[See Sir Christopher Wren’s “Proposals for rebuilding the City of London after the great fire, with an engraved Plan of the principal Streets and Public Buildings,” in Elmes’s “Memoirs of Sir Christopher Wren,” Appendix, p.61.  The originals are in All Souls’ College Library, Oxford.—­B.]

But he says that the way proposed in Parliament, by Colonel Birch, would have been the best, to have chosen some persons in trust, and sold the whole ground, and let it be sold again by them, with preference to the old owner, which would have certainly caused the City to be built where these Trustees pleased; whereas now, great differences will be, and the streets built by fits, and not entire till all differences be decided.  This, as he tells it, I think would have been the best way.  I enquired about the Frenchman