care of him and his honour, and did give me thanks for that part of it
where I say that from my heart I believe the contrary of what I do there
relate to be the discourse of others; but since I intended it not a
reproach, but matter of information, and for him to make a judgment of it
for his practice, it was necessary for me to tell him the persons of whom
I have gathered the several particulars which I there insist on. I would
have made excuses in it; but, seeing him so earnest in it, I found myself
forced to it, and so did tell him Mr. Pierce; the chyrurgeon, in that of
his Lordship's living being discoursed of at Court; a mayd servant that-I
kept, that lived at Chelsy school; and also Mr. Pickering, about the
report touching the young woman; and also Mr. Hunt, in Axe Yard, near whom
she lodged. I told him the whole city do discourse concerning his neglect
of business; and so I many times asserting my dutifull intention in all
this, and he owning his accepting of it as such. That that troubled me
most in particular is, that he did there assert the civility of the people
of the house, and the young gentlewoman, for whose reproach he was sorry.
His saying that he was resolved how to live, and that though he was taking
a house, meaning to live in another manner, yet it was not to please any
people, or to stop report, but to please himself, though this I do believe
he might say that he might not seem to me to be so much wrought upon by
what I have writ; and lastly, and most of all, when I spoke of the
tenderness that I have used in declaring this to him, there being nobody
privy to it, he told me that I must give him leave to except one. I told
him that possibly somebody might know of some thoughts of mine, I having
borrowed some intelligence in this matter from them, but nobody could say
they knew of the thing itself what I writ. This, I confess, however, do
trouble me, for that he seemed to speak it as a quick retort, and it must
sure be Will. Howe, who did not see anything of what I writ, though I told
him indeed that I would write; but in this, I think, there is no great
hurt. I find him, though he cannot but owne his opinion of my good