The Diary by Samuel Pepys (children's ebooks online TXT) 📕

so home, and there Pelling hath got me W. Penn’s book against the Trinity.4389 I got my wife to read it to me; and I find it so well writ as, I think, it is too good for him ever to have writ it; and it is a serious sort of book, and not fit for everybody to read. So to supper and to bed.

13th. Up, and all the morning at the office, and at noon home to dinner, and thence to the office again mighty busy, to my great content, till night, and then home to supper and, my eyes being weary, to bed.

14th (Lord’s day). Up, and by coach to Sir W. Coventry, and there, he taking physic, I with him all the morning, full of very good discourse of the Navy and public matters, to my great content, wherein I find him doubtful that all will be bad, and, for his part, he tells me he takes no more care for anything more than in the Treasury; and that, that being done, he goes to cards and other delights, as plays, and in summertime to bowls. But here he did show me two or three old books of the Navy, of my Lord Northumberland’s4390 times, which he hath taken many good notes out of, for justifying the Duke of York and us, in many things, wherein, perhaps, precedents will be necessary to produce, which did give me great content. At noon home, and pleased mightily with my morning’s work, and coming home, I do find a letter from Mr. Wren, to call me to the Duke of York after dinner. So dined in all haste, and then W. Hewer and my wife and I out, we set her at my cousin Turner’s while we to Whitehall, where the Duke of York expected me; and in his closet Wren and I. He did tell me how the King hath been acquainted with the Treasurers’4391 discourse at the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, the other day, and is dissatisfied with our running him in debt, which I removed; and he did, carry me to the King, and I did satisfy him also; but his satisfaction is nothing worth, it being easily got, and easily removed; but I do purpose to put in writing that which shall make the Treasurers ashamed. But the Duke of York is horrid angry against them; and he hath cause, for they do all they can to bring dishonour upon his management, as do vainly appear in all they do. Having done with the Duke of York, who do repose all in me, I with Mr. Wren to his chamber, to talk; where he observed, that these people are all of them a broken sort of people, that have not much to lose, and therefore will venture all to make their fortunes better: that Sir Thomas Osborne is a beggar, having 11 of £1,200 a-year, but owes above £10,000. The Duke of Buckingham’s condition is shortly this: that he hath about £19,600 a-year, of which he pays away about £7,000 a-year in interest, about £2,000 in fee-farm rents to the King, about £6,000 wages and pensions, and the rest to live upon, and pay taxes for the whole. Wren says, that for the Duke of York to stir in this matter, as his quality might justify, would but make all things worse, and that therefore he must bend, and suffer all, till time works it out: that he fears they will sacrifice the Church, and that the King will take anything, and so he will hold up his head a little longer, and then break in pieces. But Sir W. Coventry did today mightily magnify my late Lord Treasurer,4392 for a wise and solid, though infirm man: and, among other things, that when he hath said it was impossible in nature to find this or that sum of money, and my Lord Chancellor4393 hath made sport of it, and tell the King that when my Lord hath said it [was] impossible, yet he hath made shift to find it, and that was by Sir G. Carteret’s getting credit, my Lord did once in his hearing say thus, which he magnifies as a great saying⁠—that impossible would be found impossible at last; meaning that the King would run himself out, beyond all his credit and funds, and then we should too late find it impossible; which is, he says, now come to pass. For that Sir W. Coventry says they could borrow what money they would, if they had assignments, and funds to secure it with, which before they had enough of, and then must spend it as if it would never have an end. From Whitehall to my cousin Turner’s, and there took up my wife; and so to my uncle Wight’s, and there sat and supped, and talked pretty merry, and then walked home, and to bed.

15th. Up, and with Tom to Whitehall; and there at a Committee of Tangier, where a great instance of what a man may lose by the neglect of a friend: Povy never had such an opportunity of passing his accounts, the Duke of York being there, and everybody well disposed, and in expectation of them; but my Lord Ashly, on whom he relied, and for whose sake this day was pitched on, that he might be sure to be there, among the rest of his friends, stayed too long, till the Duke of York and the company thought unfit to stay longer and so the day lost, and God knows when he will ever have so good a one again, as long as he lives; and this was the man of the whole company that he hath made the most interest to gain, and now most depended upon him. So