The kingdom's broker, ruin of the State,
Dunkirk's sad loss, divider of the fleet,
Tangier's compounder for a barren sheet
This shrub of gentry, married to the crown,
His daughter to the heir, is tumbled down."

Poems on State Affairs, vol. i., p. 253.--B.]

It gives great matter of talk that it is said there is at this hour, in
the Exchequer, as much money as is ready to break down the floor. This
arises, I believe, from Sir G. Downing's late talk of the greatness of the
sum lying there of people's money, that they would not fetch away, which
he shewed me and a great many others. Most people that I speak with are
in doubt how we shall do to secure our seamen from running over to the
Dutch; which is a sad but very true consideration at this day. At noon I
am told that my Lord Duke of Albemarle is made Lord High Constable; the
meaning whereof at this time I know not, nor whether it, be true or no.
Dined, and Mr. Hater and W. Hewer with me; where they do speak very
sorrowfully of the posture of the times, and how people do cry out in the
streets of their being bought and sold; and both they, and every body that
come to me, do tell me that people make nothing of talking treason in the
streets openly: as, that we are bought and sold, and governed by Papists,
and that we are betrayed by people about the King, and shall be delivered
up to the French, and I know not what. At dinner we discoursed of Tom of
the Wood, a fellow that lives like a hermit near Woolwich, who, as they
say, and Mr. Bodham, they tell me, affirms that he was by at the
justice's when some did accuse him there for it, did foretell the burning
of the City, and now says that a greater desolation is at hand. Thence we
read and laughed at Lilly's prophecies this month, in his Almanack this
year! So to the office after dinner; and thither comes Mr. Pierce, who