matters have gone there this week; but not so much, or so particularly, as
we knew it by common talk before, and as true. I doubt they will be found
to have been but slow men in this business; and they say the Duke of
Albemarle did tell my Lord Bruncker to his face that his discharging of
the great ships there was the cause of all this; and I am told that it is
become common talk against my Lord Bruncker. But in that he is to be
justified, for he did it by verbal order from Sir W. Coventry, and with
good intent; and it was to good purpose, whatever the success be, for the
men would have but spent the King so much the more in wages, and yet not
attended on board to have done the King any service; and as an evidence of
that, just now, being the 15th day in the morning that I am writing
yesterday's passages, one is with me, Jacob Bryan, Purser of "The
Princesse," who confesses to me that he hath about 180 men borne at this
day in victuals and wages on that ship lying at Chatham, being lately
brought in thither; of which 180 there was not above five appeared to do
the King any service at this late business. And this morning also, some
of the Cambridge's men come up from Portsmouth, by order from Sir
Fretcheville Hollis, who boasted to us the other day that he had sent for
50, and would be hanged if 100 did not come up that would do as much as
twice the number of other men: I say some of them, instead of being at
work at Deptford, where they were intended, do come to the office this
morning to demand the payment of their tickets; for otherwise they would,
they said, do no more work; and are, as I understand from every body that
has to do with them, the most debauched, damning, swearing rogues that
ever were in the Navy, just like their prophane commander. So to Sir W.
Batten's to sit and talk a little, and then home to my flageolet, my heart
being at pretty good ease by a letter from my wife, brought by Saunders,
that my father and wife got well last night to their Inne and out again
this morning, and Gibson's being got safe to Caxton at twelve last night.
So to supper, and then to bed. No news to-day of any motion of the enemy