nor avoid them without great disadvantage and dishonour; and this Sir G. Carteret, I afterwards giving him an account of what he said, says that it is true, that he was ordered up to the Nore.  But I remember he said, had all his captains fought, he would no more have doubted to have beat the Dutch, with all their number, than to eat the apple that lay on his trencher.  My Lady Duchesse, among other things, discoursed of the wisdom of dividing the fleete; which the General said nothing to, though he knows well that it come from themselves in the fleete, and was brought up hither by Sir Edward Spragge.  Colonel Howard, asking how the prince did, the Duke of Albemarle answering, “Pretty well;” the other replied, “But not so well as to go to sea again.”—­“How!” says the Duchess, “what should he go for, if he were well, for there are no ships for him to command?  And so you have brought your hogs to a fair market,” said she. [It was pretty to hear the Duke of Albemarle himself to wish that they would come on our ground, meaning the French, for that he would pay them, so as to make them glad to go back to France again; which was like a general, but not like an admiral.] One at the table told an odd passage in this late plague:  that at Petersfield, I think, he said, one side of the street had every house almost infected through the town, and the other, not one shut up.  Dinner being done, I brought Balty to the Duke of Albemarle to kiss his hand and thank him far his kindness the last year to him, and take leave of him, and then Balty and I to walk in the Park, and, out of pity to his father, told him what I had in my thoughts to do for him about the money—­that is, to make him Deputy Treasurer of the fleete, which I have done by getting Sir G. Carteret’s consent, and an order from the Duke of York for L1500 to be paid to him.  He promises the whole profit to be paid to my wife, for to be disposed of as she sees fit, for her father and mother’s relief.  So mightily pleased with our walk, it being mighty pleasant weather, I back to Sir G. Carteret’s, and there he had newly dined, and talked, and find that he do give every thing over for lost, declaring no money to be raised, and let Sir W. Coventry name the man that persuaded the King to take the Land Tax on promise, of raising present money upon it.  He will, he says, be able to clear himself enough of it.  I made him merry, with telling him how many land-admirals we are to have this year:  Allen at Plymouth, Holmes at Portsmouth, Spragge for Medway, Teddiman at Dover, Smith to the Northward, and Harman to the Southward.  He did defend to me Sir W. Coventry as not guilty of the dividing of the fleete the last year, and blesses God, as I do, for my Lord Sandwich’s absence, and tells me how the King did lately observe to him how they have been particularly punished that were enemies to my Lord Sandwich.  Mightily pleased I am with his family, and my Lady Carteret was on the bed to-day, having been let blood, and tells me