Bridgewater.  And after Sir W. Coventry’s telling them what orders His Royal Highness had made for the safety of the Medway, I told them to their full content what we had done, and showed them our letters.  Then was Peter Pett called in, with the Lieutenant of the Tower.  He is in his old clothes, and looked most sillily.  His charge was chiefly the not carrying up of the great ships, and the using of the boats in carrying away his goods; to which he answered very sillily, though his faults to me seem only great omissions.  Lord Arlington and Coventry very severe against him; the former saying that, if he was not guilty, the world would think them all guilty.

[Pett was made a scapegoat.  This is confirmed by Marvel: 

              “After this loss, to relish discontent,
               Some one must be accused by Parliament;
               All our miscarriages on Pett must fall,
               His name alone seems fit to answer all. 
               Whose counsel first did this mad war beget? 
               Who all commands sold through the Navy?  Pett. 
               Who would not follow when the Dutch were beat? 
               Who treated out the time at Bergen?  Pett. 
               Who the Dutch fleet with storms disabled met,
               And, rifling prizes, them neglected?  Pett. 
               Who with false news prevented the Gazette,
               The fleet divided, writ for Ruhert?  Pett. 
               Who all our seamen cheated of their debt? 
               And all our prizes who did swallow?  Pett. 
               Who did advise no navy out to set? 
               And who the forts left unprepared?  Pett. 
               Who to supply with powder did forget
               Languard, Sheerness, Gravesend, and Upnor?  Pett. 
               Who all our ships exposed in Chatham net? 
               Who should it be but the fanatick Pett? 
               Pett, the sea-architect, in making ships,
               Was the first cause of all these naval slips. 
               Had he not built, none of these faults had been;
               If no creation, there had been no sin
               But his great crime, one boat away he sent,
               That lost our fleet, and did our flight prevent.”

Instructions to a Painter.—­B]

The latter urged, that there must be some faults, and that the Admiral must be found to have done his part.  I did say an unhappy word, which I was sorry for, when he complained of want of oares for the boats:  and there was, it seems, enough, and good enough, to carry away all the boats with from the King’s occasions.  He said he used never a boat till they were all gone but one; and that was to carry away things of great value, and these were his models of ships; which, when the Council, some of them, had said they wished that the Dutch had had them instead of the King’s ships, he answered,