15th.  Up, and to Alderman Backewell’s

[Edward Backwell, goldsmith and alderman of the City of London.  He was a man of considerable wealth during the Commonwealth.  After the Restoration he negotiated Charles ii.’s principal money transactions.  He was M.P. for Wendover in the parliament of 1679, and in the Oxford parliament of 1680.  According to the writer of the life in the “Diet. of Nat.  Biog. “his heirs did not ultimately suffer any pecuniary loss by the closure of the Exchequer.  Mr. Hilton Price stated that Backwell removed to Holland in 1676, and died therein 1679; but this is disproved by the pedigree in Lipscomb’s “Hist. of Bucks,” where the date of his death is given as 1683, as well as by the fact that he sat for Wendover in 1679 and 1680, as stated above.]

and there discoursed with him about the remitting of this L6000 to Tangier, which he hath promised to do by the first post, and that will be by Monday next, the 18th, and he and I agreed that I would take notice of it that so he may be found to have done his best upon the desire of the Lords Commissioners.  From this we went to discourse of his condition, and he with some vain glory told me that the business of Sheernesse did make him quite mad, and indeed might well have undone him; but yet that he did the very next day pay here and got bills to answer his promise to the King for the Swedes Embassadors (who were then doing our business at the treaty at Breda) L7000, and did promise the Bankers there, that if they would draw upon him all that he had of theirs and L10,000 more, he would answer it.  He told me that Serjeant Maynard come to him for a sum of money that he had in his hands of his, and so did many others, and his answer was, What countrymen are you?  And when they told him, why then, says he, here is a tally upon the Receiver of your country for so [much], and to yours for so much, and did offer to lay by tallies to the full value of all that he owed in the world, and L40,000 more for the security thereof, and not to touch a penny of his own till the full of what he owed was paid, which so pleased every body that he hath mastered all, so that he hath lent the Commissioners of the Treasury above L40,000 in money since that business, and did this morning offer to a lady who come to give him notice that she should need her money L3000, in twenty days, he bid her if she pleased send for it to-day and she should have it.  Which is a very great thing, and will make them greater than ever they were, I am apt to think, in some time.  Thence to Westminster, and there I walked with several, and do hear that there is to be a conference between the two Houses today; so I stayed:  and it was only to tell the Commons that the Lords cannot agree to the confining or sequestring of the Earle of Clarendon from the Parliament, forasmuch as they do not specify any particular crime which they lay upon him and call Treason.  This the House did receive, and so parted: