himself, saying, that he heard that he was under the lash of people's
discourse about the Prince's not having notice of the Dutch being out, and
for him to comeback again, nor the Duke of Albemarle notice that the
Prince was sent for back again: to which he told me very particularly how
careful he was the very same night that it was resolved to send for the
Prince back, to cause orders to be writ, and waked the Duke, who was then
in bed, to sign them; and that they went by expresse that very night,
being the Wednesday night before the fight, which begun on the Friday; and
that for sending them by the post expresse, and not by gentlemen on
purpose, he made a sport of it, and said, I knew of none to send it with,
but would at least have lost more time in fitting themselves out, than any
diligence of theirs beyond that of the ordinary post would have recovered.
I told him that this was not so much the towne talke as the reason of
dividing the fleete. To this he told me he ought not to say much; but did
assure me in general that the proposition did first come from the fleete,
and the resolution not being prosecuted with orders so soon as the
Generall thought fit, the Generall did send Sir Edward Spragge up on
purpose for them; and that there was nothing in the whole business which
was not done with the full consent and advice of the Duke of Albemarle.

But he did adde (as the Catholiques call 'le secret de la Masse'), that
Sir Edward Spragge--who had even in Sir Christopher Mings's time put in to
be the great favourite of the Prince, but much more now had a mind to be
the great man with him, and to that end had a mind to have the Prince at a
distance from the Duke of Albemarle, that they might be doing something
alone--did, as he believed, put on this business of dividing the fleete,
and that thence it came.

[This division of the fleet was the original cause of the disaster,
and at a later period the enemies of Clarendon charged him with