crouch to my Lord, but says that he hath as good blood in his veins as any
man, though not so good a title, but that he will do nothing to wrong or
prejudice my Lord, and I hope he will not, nor I believe can; but he tells
me that Sir E. Spragg and Utber are the men that have done my Lord the
most wrong, and did bespatter him the most at Oxford, and that my Lord was
misled to believe that all that was there said was his, which indeed it
was not, and says that he did at that time complain to his father of this
his misfortune. This I confess is strange to me touching these two men,
but yet it may well enough as the world goes, though I wonder I confess at
the latter of the two, who always professes great love to my Lord. Sir
Roger Cuttance was with me in the morning, and there gives me an account
so clear about Bergen and the other business against my Lord, as I do not
see what can be laid to my Lord in either, and tells me that Pen, however
he now dissembles it, did on the quarter deck of my Lord's ship, after he
come on board, when my Lord did fire a gun for the ships to leave pursuing
the enemy, Pen did say, before a great many, several times, that his heart
did leap in his belly for joy when he heard the gun, and that it was the
best thing that could be done for securing the fleet. He tells me also
that Pen was the first that did move and persuade my Lord to the breaking
bulke, as a thing that was now the time to do right to the commanders of
the great ships, who had no opportunity of getting anything by prizes, now
his Lordship might distribute to everyone something, and he himself did
write down before my Lord the proportions for each man. This I am glad
of, though it may be this dissembling fellow may, twenty to one, deny it.

27th. Up, and all the morning at my Lord Bruncker's lodgings with Sir J.
Minnes and [Sir] W. Pen about Sir W. Warren's accounts, wherein I do not
see that they are ever very likely to come to an understanding of them, as
Sir J. Minnes hath not yet handled them. Here till noon, and then home to
dinner, where Mr. Pierce comes to me, and there, in general, tells me how