that was too great an appeale to the people. Roger is mighty full of
fears of the consequence of it, and wishes the King would dissolve them.
So we parted, and I bought some Scotch cakes at Wilkinson's in King
Street, and called my wife, and home, and there to supper, talk, and to
bed. Supped upon these cakes, of which I have eat none since we lived at
Westminster. This night our poor little dogg Fancy was in a strange fit,
through age, of which she has had five or six.
3rd. Up, by candlelight, the only time I think I have done so this
winter, and a coach being got over night, I to Sir W. Coventry's, the
first time I have seen him at his new house since he come to lodge there.
He tells me of the vote for none of the House to be of the Commission for
the Bill of Accounts; which he thinks is so great a disappointment to
Birch and others that expected to be of it, that he thinks, could it have
been [fore]seen, there would not have been any Bill at all. We hope it
will be the better for all that are to account; it being likely that the
men, being few, and not of the House, will hear reason. The main business
I went about was about. Gilsthrop, Sir W. Batten's clerk; who, being upon
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,"
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