the other at White Hall, and I to St. James's, where we all met, and did
our usual weekly business with the Duke of York. But, Lord! methinks both
he and we are mighty flat and dull over what we used to be, when Sir W.
Coventry was among us. Thence I into St. James's Park, and there met Mr.
Povy; and he and I to walk an hour or more in the Pell Mell, talking of
the times. He tells me, among other things, that this business of the
Chancellor do breed a kind of inward distance between the King and the
Duke of York, and that it cannot be avoided; for though the latter did at
first move it through his folly, yet he is made to see that he is wounded
by it, and is become much a less man than he was, and so will be: but he
tells me that they are, and have always been, great dissemblers one
towards another; and that their parting heretofore in France is never to
be thoroughly reconciled between them. He tells me that he believes there
is no such thing like to be, as a composition with my Lady Castlemayne,
and that she shall be got out of the way before the Parliament comes; for
he says she is as high as ever she was, though he believes the King is as
weary of her as is possible, and would give any thing to remove her, but
he is so weak in his passion that he dare not do it; that he do believe
that my Lord Chancellor will be doing some acts in the Parliament which
shall render him popular; and that there are many people now do speak
kindly of him that did not before; but that, if he do do this, it must
provoke the King, and that party that removed him. He seems to doubt what
the King of France will do, in case an accommodation shall be made between
Spain and him for Flanders, for then he will have nothing more easy to do
with his army than to subdue us. Parted with him at White Hall, and,
there I took coach and took up my wife and Mercer, and so home and I to
the office, where ended my letters, and then to my chamber with my boy to
lay up some papers and things that lay out of order against to-morrow, to
make it clear against the feast that I am to have. Here Mr. Pelling come
to sit with us, and talked of musique and the musicians of the town, and