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

her; and she, by all reports, incapable of children. He is so fond of the Duke of Monmouth, that everybody admires it; and he says the Duke hath said, that he would be the death of any man that says the King was not married to his mother: though Alsopp says, it is well known that she was a common whore before the King lay with her. But it seems, he says, that the King is mighty kind to these his bastard children; and at this day will go at midnight to my Lady Castlemaine’s nurses, and take the child and dance it in his arms: that he is not likely to have his tables up again in his house2064 for the crew that are about him will not have him come to common view again, but keep him obscurely among themselves. He hath this night, it seems, ordered that the Hall (which there is a ball to be in tonight before the King) be guarded, as the Queen-Mother’s is, by his Horse Guards; whereas heretofore they were by the Lord Chamberlain or Steward, and their people. But it is feared they will reduce all to the soldiery, and all other places taken away; and what is worst of all, that he will alter the present militia, and bring all to a flying army. That my Lord Lauderdale, being Middleton’s enemy,2065 and one that scorns the Chancellor even to open affronts before the King, hath got the whole power of Scotland into his hand; whereas the other day he was in a fair way to have had his whole estate, and honour, and life, voted away from him. That the King hath done himself all imaginable wrong in the business of my Lord Antrim,2066 in Ireland; who, though he was the head of rebels, yet he by his letter owns to have acted by his father’s and mother’s, and his commissions; but it seems the truth is, he hath obliged himself, upon the clearing of his estate, to settle it upon a daughter of the Queen-Mother’s (by my Lord Germin,2067 I suppose,) in marriage, be it to whom the Queen pleases; which is a sad story. It seems a daughter of the Duke of Lenox’s was, by force, going to be married the other day at Somerset House, to Harry Germin; but she got away and run to the King, and he says he will protect her. She is, it seems, very near akin to the King. Such mad doings there are every day among them! The rape upon a woman at Turnstile the other day, her husband being bound in his shirt, they both being in bed together, it being night, by two Frenchmen, who did not only lie with her but abused her with a linke, is hushed up for £300, being the Queen Mother’s servants. There was a French book in verse, the other day, translated and presented to the Duke of Monmouth in such a high stile, that the Duke of York, he tells me, was mightily offended at it.2068 The Duke of Monmouth’s mother’s brother hath a place at Court; and being a Welchman2069 (I think he told me) will talk very broad of the King’s being married to his sister. The King did the other day, at the Council, commit my Lord Digby’s2070 chaplin, and steward, and another servant, who went upon the process begun there against their lord, to swear that they saw him at church, and receive the Sacrament as a Protestant, (which, the judges said, was sufficient to prove him such in the eye of the law);2071 the King, I say, did commit them all to the Gatehouse, notwithstanding their pleading their dependance upon him, and the faith they owed him as their lord, whose bread they eat. And that the King should say, that he would soon see whether he was King, or Digby. That the Queen-Mother hath outrun herself in her expenses, and is now come to pay very ill, or run in debt; the money being spent that she received for leases. He believes there is not any money laid up in bank, as I told him some did hope; but he says, from the best informers he can assure me there is no such thing, nor anybody that should look after such a thing; and that there is not now above £80,000 of the Dunkirke money left in stock. That Oliver in the year when he spent £1,400,000 in the Navy, did spend in the whole expense of the kingdom £2,600,000. That all the Court are mad for a Dutch war; but both he and I did concur, that it was a thing rather to be dreaded than hoped for; unless by the French King’s falling upon Flanders, they and the Dutch should be divided. That our Embassador2072 had, it is true, an audience; but in the most dishonourable way that could be; for the Princes of the Blood (though invited by our Embassador, which was the greatest absurdity that ever Embassador committed these 400 years) were not there; and so were not said to give place to our King’s Embassador. And that our King did openly say, the other day in the Privy Chamber, that he would not be hectored out of his right and preeminencys by the King of France, as great as he was. That the Pope is glad to yield to a peace with the French (as the news-book says), upon the basest terms that ever was. That the talk which these people about our King, that I named before, have, is to tell him how neither privilege of Parliament nor City is anything; but his will is all, and ought to be so: and their discourse, it seems, when they are alone, is so base