which was a pretty kind of content she gave herself.  She tells us that Catelin is likely to be soon acted, which I am glad to hear, but it is at the King’s House.  But the King’s House is at present and hath for some days been silenced upon some difference [between] Hart and Moone.  She being gone I to the office, and there late doing business, and so home to supper and to bed.  Only this evening I must remember that my Lady Batten sent for me, and it was to speak to me before her overseers about my bargain with Sir W. Batten about the prize, to which I would give no present answer, but am well enough contented that they begin the discourse of it, and so away to the office again, and then home to supper and to bed.  Somebody told me this, that they hear that Thomson, with the wooden leg, and Wildman, the Fifth-Monarchy man, a great creature of the Duke of Buckingham’s, are in nomination to be Commissioners, among others, upon the Bill of Accounts.

8th (Lord’s day).  All the morning at my chamber doing something towards the settling of my papers and accounts, which have been out of order a great while.  At noon to dinner, where W. How with us, and after dinner, he being gone, I to my chamber again till almost night, and then took boat, the tide serving, and so to White Hall, where I saw the Duchesse of York, in a fine dress of second mourning for her mother, being black, edged with ermine, go to make her first visit to the Queene since the Duke of York was sick; and by and by, she being returned, the Queene come and visited her.  But it was pretty to observe that Sir W. Coventry and I, walking an hour and more together in the Matted Gallery, he observed, and so did I, how the Duchesse, as soon as she spied him, turned her head a one side.  Here he and I walked thus long, which we have not done a great while before.  Our discourse was upon everything:  the unhappiness of having our matters examined by people that understand them not; that it was better for us in the Navy to have men that do understand the whole, and that are not passionate; that we that have taken the most pains are called upon to answer for all crimes, while those that, like Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes, did sit and do nothing, do lie still without any trouble; that, if it were to serve the King and kingdom again in a war, neither of us could do more, though upon this experience we might do better than we did; that the commanders, the gentlemen that could never be brought to order, but undid all, are now the men that find fault and abuse others; that it had been much better for the King to have given Sir J. Minnes and Sir W. Batten L1000 a-year to have sat still, than to have had them in his business this war:  that the serving a Prince that minds not his business is most unhappy for them that serve him well, and an unhappiness so great that he declares he will never have more to do with a war, under him.  That he hath papers which do flatly contradict the Duke of Albemarle’s Narrative;