house, where my Lord Bruncker told me that I should meet with his dinner
two dishes of meat, but did not, but however by the help of Mr. Wiles had
some beer and ale brought me, and a good piece of roast beef from
somebody's table, and eat well at two, and after dinner into the garden to
shew Creed, and I must confess it must needs be thought a sorrowful thing
for a man that hath taken so much pains to make a place neat to lose it as
Commissioner Pett must now this. Thence to see the batteries made; which,
indeed, are very fine, and guns placed so as one would think the River
should be very secure. I was glad, as also it was new to me, to see so
many fortifications as I have of late seen, and so up to the top of the
Hill, there to look, and could see towards Sheerenesse, to spy the Dutch
fleete, but could make [out] none but one vessel, they being all gone.
But here I was told, that, in all the late attempt, there was but one man
that they knew killed on shore: and that was a man that had laid himself
upon his belly upon one of the hills, on the other side of the River, to
see the action; and a bullet come, took the ground away just under his
belly, and ripped up his belly, and so was killed. Thence back to the
docke, and in my way saw how they are fain to take the deals of the
rope-house to supply other occasions, and how sillily the country troopers
look, that stand upon the passes there; and, methinks, as if they were
more willing to run away than to fight, and it is said that the country
soldiers did first run at Sheerenesse, but that then my Lord Douglas's men
did run also; but it is excused that there was no defence for them towards
the sea, that so the very beach did fly in their faces as the bullets
come, and annoyed them, they having, after all this preparation of the
officers of the ordnance, only done something towards the land, and
nothing at all towards the sea. The people here everywhere do speak very
badly of Sir Edward Spragge, as not behaving himself as he should have
done in that business, going away with the first, and that old Captain
Pyne, who, I am here told, and no sooner, is Master-Gunner of England, was