his death-bed, and now dead, hath offered to make discoveries of the
disorders of the Navy and of L65,000 damage to the King: which made mighty
noise in the Commons' House; and members appointed to go to him, which
they did; but nothing to the purpose got from him, but complaints of false
musters, and ships being refitted with victuals and stores at Plymouth,
after they come fitted from other ports; but all this to no purpose, nor
more than we know, and will owne. But the best is, that this loggerhead
should say this, that understands nothing of the Navy, nor ever would; and
hath particularly blemished his master by name among us. I told Sir W.
Coventry of my letter to Sir R. Brookes, and his answer to me. He advises
me, in what I write to him, to be as short as I can, and obscure, saving
in things fully plain; for all that he do is to make mischief; and that
the greatest wisdom in dealing with the Parliament in the world is to say
little, and let them get out what they can by force: which I shall
observe. He declared to me much of his mind to be ruled by his own
measures, and not to go so far as many would have him to the ruin of my
Lord Chancellor, and for which they do endeavour to do what they can
against [Sir] W. Coventry. "But," says he, "I have done my do in helping
to get him out of the administration of things, for which he is not fit;
but for his life or estate I will have nothing to say to it: besides that,
my duty to my master the Duke of York is such, that I will perish before I
will do any thing to displease or disoblige him, where the very necessity
of the kingdom do not in my judgment call me." Thence I home and to the
office, where my Lord Anglesey, and all the discourse was yesterday's vote
in the Commons, wherein he told us that, should the Lords yield to what
the Commons would have in this matter, it were to make them worse than any
justice of Peace (whereas they are the highest Court in the Kingdom) that
they cannot be judges whether an offender be to be committed or bailed,
which every justice of Peace do do, and then he showed me precedents plain
in their defence. At noon home to dinner, and busy all the afternoon, and