lost more after the Prince come, than before too. The Prince was so
maimed, as to be forced to be towed home. He says all the fleete confess
their being chased home by the Dutch; and yet the body of the Dutch that
did it, was not above forty sayle at most. And yet this put us into the
fright, as to bring all our ships on ground. He says, however, that the
Duke of Albemarle is as high almost as ever, and pleases himself to think
that he hath given the Dutch their bellies full, without sense of what he
hath lost us; and talks how he knows now the way to beat them. But he
says, that even Smith himself, one of his creatures, did himself condemn
the late conduct from the beginning to the end. He tells me further, how
the Duke of Yorke is wholly given up to his new mistresse, my Lady Denham,
going at noon-day with all his gentlemen with him to visit her in Scotland
Yard; she declaring she will not be his mistresse, as Mrs. Price, to go up
and down the Privy-stairs, but will be owned publicly; and so she is. Mr.
Bruncker, it seems, was the pimp to bring it about, and my Lady
Castlemaine, who designs thereby to fortify herself by the Duke; there
being a falling-out the other day between the King and her: on this
occasion, the Queene, in ordinary talke before the ladies in her
drawing-room, did say to my Lady Castlemaine that she feared the King did
take cold, by staying so late abroad at her house. She answered before
them all, that he did not stay so late abroad with her, for he went
betimes thence (though he do not before one, two, or three in the
morning), but must stay somewhere else. The King then coming in and
overhearing, did whisper in the eare aside, and told her she was a bold
impertinent woman, and bid her to be gone out of the Court, and not come
again till he sent for, her; which she did presently, and went to a
lodging in the Pell Mell, and kept there two or three days, and then sent
to the King to know whether she might send for her things away out of her
house. The King sent to her, she must first come and view them: and so
she come, and the King went to her, and all friends again. He tells me