[There had been correspondence with Pett respecting this chain in April and May.  On the 10th May Pett wrote to the Navy Commissioners, “The chain is promised to be dispatched to-morrow, and all things are ready for fixing it.”  On the 11th June the Dutch “got twenty or twenty-two ships over the narrow part of the river at Chatham, where ships had been sunk; after two and a half hours’ fighting one guard-ship after another was fired and blown up, and the enemy master of the chain” ("Calendar of State Papers,” 1667, pp. 58, 87, 215).]

When I come to Sir W:  Coventry’s chamber, I find him abroad; but his clerk, Powell, do tell me that ill newes is come to Court of the Dutch breaking the Chaine at Chatham; which struck me to the heart.  And to White Hall to hear the truth of it; and there, going up the back-stairs, I did hear some lacquies speaking of sad newes come to Court, saying, that hardly anybody in the Court but do look as if he cried, and would not go into the house for fear of being seen, but slunk out and got into a coach, and to The.  Turner’s to Sir W. Turner’s, where I met Roger Pepys, newly come out of the country.  He and I talked aside a little, he offering a match for Pall, one Barnes, of whom we shall talk more the next time.  His father married a Pepys; in discourse, he told me further that his grandfather, my great grandfather, had L800 per annum, in Queen Elizabeth’s time, in the very town of Cottenham; and that we did certainly come out of Scotland with the Abbot of Crowland.  More talk I had, and shall have more with him, but my mind is so sad and head full of this ill news that I cannot now set it down.  A short visit here, my wife coming to me, and took leave of The., and so home, where all our hearts do now ake; for the newes is true, that the Dutch have broke the chaine and burned our ships, and particularly “The Royal Charles,”

     [Vandervelde’s drawings of the conflagration of the English fleet,
     made by him on the spot, are in the British Museum.—­B.]

other particulars I know not, but most sad to be sure.  And, the truth is, I do fear so much that the whole kingdom is undone, that I do this night resolve to study with my father and wife what to do with the little that I have in money by me, for I give [up] all the rest that I have in the King’s hands, for Tangier, for lost.  So God help us! and God knows what disorders we may fall into, and whether any violence on this office, or perhaps some severity on our persons, as being reckoned by the silly people, or perhaps may, by policy of State, be thought fit to be condemned by the King and Duke of York, and so put to trouble; though, God knows!  I have, in my own person, done my full duty, I am sure.  So having with much ado finished my business at the office, I home to consider with my father and wife of things, and then to supper and to bed with a heavy heart.  The manner of my advising this night with my father