keep himself at liberty to follow his business ....  At the Revolution, when his interest fell from, and his debts began to fall upon him, he was at his wits’ end ....  His character for fidelity, loyalty, and facetious conversation was without exception”—­Roger North’s Lives of the Norths (Lord Keeper Guilford), ed.  Jessopp, vol. i., pp. 381-2.  He was originally made Lord Chancellor of Ireland in the reign of James ii., during the viceroyalty of Lord Clarendon, 1686, when he was knighted.  “He was,” says Burnet, “a man of ready wit, and being poor was thought a person fit to be made a tool of.  When Clarendon was recalled, Porter was also displaced, and Fitton was made chancellor, a man who knew no other law than the king’s pleasure” ("Own Time").  Sir Charles Porter was again made Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1690, and in this same year he acted as one of the Lords Justices.  This note of Lord Braybrooke’s is retained and added to, but the reference may after all be to another Charles Porter.  See vol. iii., p. 122, and vol. vi., p. 98.]

talking of a great many things:  and I perceive all the world is against the Duke of Buckingham his acting thus high, and do prophesy nothing but ruin from it:  But he do well observe that the church lands cannot certainly come to much, if the King shall [be] persuaded to take them; they being leased out for long leases.  By and by, after two hours’ stay, they rose, having, as Wren tells me, resolved upon sending six ships to the Streights forthwith, not being contented with the peace upon the terms they demand, which are, that all our ships, where any Turks or Moores shall be found slaves, shall be prizes; which will imply that they, must be searched.  I hear that to-morrow the King and the Duke of York set out for Newmarket, by three in the morning; to some foot and horse-races, to be abroad ten or twelve days:  So I away, without seeing the Duke of York; but Mr. Wren showed me the Order of Council about the balancing the Storekeeper’s accounts, passed the Council in the very terms I drew it, only I did put in my name as he that presented the book of Hosier’s preparing, and that is left out—­I mean, my name—­which is no great matter.  So to my wife to Suffolk Streete, where she was gone, and there I found them at supper, and eat a little with them, and so home, and there to bed, my cold pretty well gone.

8th.  Up, and with W. Hewer by hackney coach to White Hall, where the King and the Duke of York is gone by three in the morning, and had the misfortune to be overset with the Duke of York, the Duke of Monmouth, and the Prince, at the King’s Gate’ in Holborne; and the King all dirty, but no hurt.  How it come to pass I know not, but only it was dark, and the torches did not, they say, light the coach as they should do.  I thought this morning to have seen my Lord Sandwich before he went out of town, but I come half an hour too late; which troubles me, I having not seen him since my Lady Palls died.