Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,606 pages of information about Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete.

Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,606 pages of information about Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete.
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
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Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.