and try them with a sum of money; and, if they do not like it, then to
send them going, and call another, who will, at the ruin of the Church
perhaps, please the King with what he will for a time. And he tells me,
therefore, that he do believe that this policy will be endeavoured by the
Church and their friends--to seem to promise the King money, when it shall
be propounded, but make the King and these great men buy it dear, before
they have it. He tells me that he is really persuaded that the design of
the Duke of Buckingham is, by bringing the state into such a condition as,
if the King do die without issue, it shall, upon his death, break into
pieces again; and so put by the Duke of York, who they have disobliged,
they know, to that degree, as to despair of his pardon. He tells me that
there is no way to rule the King but by brisknesse, which the Duke of
Buckingham hath above all men; and that the Duke of York having it not,
his best way is what he practices, that is to say, a good temper, which
will support him till the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Arlington fall out,
which cannot be long first, the former knowing that the latter did, in the
time of the Chancellor, endeavour with the Chancellor to hang him at that
time, when he was proclaimed against. And here, by the by, he told me
that the Duke of Buckingham did, by his friends, treat with my Lord
Chancellor, by the mediation of Matt. Wren and Matt. Clifford, to fall in
with my Lord Chancellor; which, he tells me, he did advise my Lord
Chancellor to accept of, as that, that with his own interest and the Duke
of York's, would undoubtedly have assured all to him and his family; but
that my Lord Chancellor was a man not to be advised, thinking himself too
high to be counselled: and so all is come to nothing; for by that means
the Duke of Buckingham became desperate, and was forced to fall in with
Arlington, to his [the Chancellor's] ruin. Thence I home, and there to
talk, with great pleasure all the evening, with my wife, who tells me that
Deb, has been abroad to-day, and is come home and says she has got a place
to go to, so as she will be gone tomorrow morning. This troubled me, and