But it is feared they will reduce all to the soldiery, and all other places taken away; and what is worst of all, that he will alter the present militia, and bring all to a flying army.  That my Lord Lauderdale, being Middleton’s enemy, and one that scorns the Chancellor even to open affronts before the King, hath got the whole power of Scotland into his hand; whereas the other day he was in a fair way to have had his whole estate, and honour, and life, voted away from him.  That the King hath done himself all imaginable wrong in the business of my Lord Antrim, in Ireland; who, though he was the head of rebels, yet he by his letter owns to have acted by his father’s and mother’s, and his commissions; but it seems the truth is, he hath obliged himself, upon the clearing of his estate, to settle it upon a daughter of the Queene-Mother’s (by my Lord Germin, I suppose,) in marriage, be it to whom the Queene pleases; which is a sad story.  It seems a daughter of the Duke of Lenox’s was, by force, going to be married the other day at Somerset House, to Harry Germin; but she got away and run to the King, and he says he will protect her.  She is, it seems, very near akin to the King:  Such mad doings there are every day among them!  The rape upon a woman at Turnstile the other day, her husband being bound in his shirt, they both being in bed together, it being night, by two Frenchmen, who did not only lye with her but abused her with a linke, is hushed up for L300, being the Queen Mother’s servants.  There was a French book in verse, the other day, translated and presented to the Duke of Monmouth in such a high stile, that the Duke of York, he tells me, was mightily offended at it.  The Duke of Monmouth’s mother’s brother hath a place at Court; and being a Welchman (I think he told me) will talk very broad of the King’s being married to his sister.  The King did the other day, at the Council, commit my Lord Digby’s’ chaplin, and steward, and another servant, who went upon the process begun there against their lord, to swear that they saw him at church, end receive the Sacrament as a Protestant, (which, the judges said, was sufficient to prove him such in the eye of the law); the King, I say, did commit them all to the Gate-house, notwithstanding their pleading their dependance upon him, and the faith they owed him as their lord, whose bread they eat.  And that the King should say, that he would soon see whether he was King, or Digby.  That the Queene-Mother hath outrun herself in her expences, and is now come to pay very ill, or run in debt; the money being spent that she received for leases.  He believes there is not any money laid up in bank, as I told him some did hope; but he says, from the best informers he can assure me there is no such thing, nor any body that should look after such a thing; and that there is not now above L80,000 of the Dunkirke money left in stock.  That Oliver in the year when he spent L1,400,000 in the Navy, did spend in the whole expence of the kingdom L2,600,000.