So I walked with them in the garden, and was very
angry with them both for their going out of town without
my knowledge; but they told me the business, which
was to see a gentlewoman for a wife for Tom, of Mr.
Cooke’s providing, worth L500, of good education,
her name Hobell, and lives near Banbury, demands L40
per annum joynter. Tom likes her, and, they
say, had a very good reception, and that Cooke hath
been very serviceable therein, and that she is committed
to old Mr. Young, of the Wardrobe’s, tuition.
After I had told them my mind about their folly in
going so unadvisedly, I then begun to inquire after
the business, and so did give no answer as to my opinion
till I have looked farther into it by Mr. Young.
By and by, as we were walking in my Lord’s
walk, comes my Lord, and so we broke our discourse
and went in with him, and after I had put them away
I went in to my Lord, and he and I had half an hour’s
private discourse about the discontents of the times,
which we concluded would not come to anything of difference,
though the Presbyters would be glad enough of it;
but we do not think religion will so soon cause another
war. Then to his own business. He asked
my advice there, whether he should go on to purchase
more land and to borrow money to pay for it, which
he is willing to do, because such a bargain as that
of Mr. Buggins’s, of Stukely, will not be every
day to be had, and Brampton is now perfectly granted
him by the King—I mean the reversion of
it—after the Queen’s death; and, in
the meantime, he buys it of Sir Peter Ball his present
right. Then we fell to talk of Navy business,
and he concludes, as I do, that he needs not put himself
upon any more voyages abroad to spend money, unless
a war comes; and that by keeping his family awhile
in the country, he shall be able to gather money.
He is glad of a friendship with Mr. Coventry, and
I put him upon increasing it, which he will do, but
he (as Mr. Coventry do) do much cry against the course
of our payments and the Treasurer to have the whole
power in his own hands of doing what he will, but
I think will not meddle in himself. He told me
also that in the Commission for Tangier Mr. Coventry
had advised him that Mr. Povy, who intended to be
Treasurer,
[Thomas Povy, who had held, under Cromwell, a high situation in the Office of Plantations, was appointed in July, 1660, Treasurer and Receiver-General of the Rents and Revenues of James, Duke of York; but his royal master’s affairs falling into confusion, he surrendered his patent on the 27th July, 1668, for a consideration of L2,000. He was also First Treasurer for Tangier, which office he resigned to Pepys. Povy, had apartments at Whitehall, besides his lodgings in Lincoln’s Inn, and a villa near Hounslow, called the Priory, which he had inherited from Justinian Povy, who purchased it in 1625. He was one of the sons of Justinian Povy, Auditor-General to Queen Anne of Denmark in 1614, whose father was John Povy, citizen