not have been any Bill at all. We hope it will
be the better for all that are to account; it being
likely that the men, being few, and not of the House,
will hear reason. The main business I went about
was about. Gilsthrop, Sir W. Batten’s clerk;
who, being upon his death-bed, and now dead, hath
offered to make discoveries of the disorders of the
Navy and of L65,000 damage to the King: which
made mighty noise in the Commons’ House; and
members appointed to go to him, which they did; but
nothing to the purpose got from him, but complaints
of false musters, and ships being refitted with victuals
and stores at Plymouth, after they come fitted from
other ports; but all this to no purpose, nor more
than we know, and will owne. But the best is,
that this loggerhead should say this, that understands
nothing of the Navy, nor ever would; and hath particularly
blemished his master by name among us. I told
Sir W. Coventry of my letter to Sir R. Brookes, and
his answer to me. He advises me, in what I write
to him, to be as short as I can, and obscure, saving
in things fully plain; for all that he do is to make
mischief; and that the greatest wisdom in dealing
with the Parliament in the world is to say little,
and let them get out what they can by force: which
I shall observe. He declared to me much of his
mind to be ruled by his own measures, and not to go
so far as many would have him to the ruin of my Lord
Chancellor, and for which they do endeavour to do what
they can against [Sir] W. Coventry. “But,”
says he, “I have done my do in helping to get
him out of the administration of things, for which
he is not fit; but for his life or estate I will have
nothing to say to it: besides that, my duty to
my master the Duke of York is such, that I will perish
before I will do any thing to displease or disoblige
him, where the very necessity of the kingdom do not
in my judgment call me.” Thence I home
and to the office, where my Lord Anglesey, and all
the discourse was yesterday’s vote in the Commons,
wherein he told us that, should the Lords yield to
what the Commons would have in this matter, it were
to make them worse than any justice of Peace (whereas
they are the highest Court in the Kingdom) that they
cannot be judges whether an offender be to be committed
or bailed, which every justice of Peace do do, and
then he showed me precedents plain in their defence.
At noon home to dinner, and busy all the afternoon,
and at night home, and there met W. Batelier, who
tells me the first great news that my Lord Chancellor
is fled this day. By and by to Sir W. Pen’s,
where Sir R. Ford and he and I met, with Mr. Young
and Lewes, about our accounts with my Lady Batten,
which prove troublesome, and I doubt will prove to
our loss. But here I hear the whole that my Lord
Chancellor is gone, and left a paper behind him for
the House of Lords, telling them the reason of him
retiring, complaining of a design for his ruin.
But the paper I must get: only the thing at