nd have now done the last office of laying him in the ground.
We would be glad we had any other to offer after him, and in revenge of
him. All we have is our lives; if you will please to get His Royal
Highness to give us a fire-ship among us all, here are a dozen of us,
out of all which choose you one of us to be commander, and the rest of
us, whoever he is, will serve him; and, if possible, do that which shall
show our memory of our dead commander, and our revenge.' Sir W.
Coventry was herewith much moved, as well as I, who could hardly abstain
from weeping."

"Sir Christopher Mings was a very stout man, and a man of great parts,
and most excellent tongue among ordinary men; and would have been a most
useful man at such a time as this."

He gives a deplorable account of the state of the navy, the neglect of
business by Charles and his brother, and the want of money. On the 8th
of October, 1665, he writes: "I think of twenty-two ships, we shall make
shift to get out seven. (God help us! men being sick, or provisions
lacking.) There is nothing but discontent among the officers, and all
the old experienced men are slighted."

Speaking of the action with the Dutch, he says: "They do mightily insult
of their victory, and they have great reason. Sir William Barkeley was
killed before his ship taken; and there he lies dead in a sugar-chest,
for everybody to see, with his flag standing up by him. And Sir George
Ascue is carried up and down the Hague for people to see."

The abominable system of the press-gang was then in full force, and was
carried on with the same cruelty which existed till a much later period:
"To the Tower several times, about the business of the pressed men, and
late at it till twelve at night shipping of them. But, Lord! how some
poor women did cry; and in my life I never did see such natural
expression of passion as I did here in some women bewailing themselves,
and running to every parcel of men that were brought one after another
to look for their husbands, and wept over every vessel that went off,
thinking they might be there, and looking after the ship as far as ever
they could by moone-light, that it grieved me to the heart to hear them.
Besides, to see poor, patient, labouring men and housekeepers leaving
poor wives and families, taken up on a sudden by strangers, was very
hard, and that without press-money, but forced against all law to be
gone. It is a great tyranny."

The next morn