the Parliament itself cannot be thought able at
present to raise money, and therefore it will be to no purpose to call
one. I hear this day poor Michell's child is dead.

19th. Up, and to the office, where all the morning busy with Fist again,
beginning early to overtake my business in my letters, which for a post
or two have by the late and present troubles been interrupted. At noon
comes Sir W. Batten and [Sir] W. Pen, and we to [Sir] W. Pen's house,
and there discoursed of business an hour, and by and by comes an
order from Sir R. Browne, commanding me this afternoon to attend the
Council-board, with all my books and papers touching the Medway. I
was ready [to fear] some mischief to myself, though it appears most
reasonable that it is to inform them about Commissioner Pett. I eat
a little bit in haste at Sir W. Batten's, without much comfort, being
fearful, though I shew it not, and to my office and get up some papers,
and found out the most material letters and orders in our books, and so
took coach and to the Council-chamber lobby, where I met Mr. Evelyn, who
do miserably decry our follies that bring all this misery upon us. While
we were discoursing over our publique misfortunes, I am called in to a
large Committee of the Council: present the Duke of Albemarle, Anglesey,
Arlington, Ashly, Carteret, Duncomb, Coventry, Ingram, Clifford,
Lauderdale, Morrice, Manchester, Craven, Carlisle, Bridgewater. And
after Sir W. Coventry's telling them what orders His Royal Highness had
made for the safety of the Medway, I told them to their full content
what we had done, and showed them our letters. Then was Peter Pett
called in, with the Lieutenant of the Tower. He is in his old clothes,
and looked most sillily. His charge was chiefly the not carrying up of
the great ships, and the using of the boats in carrying away his goods;
to which he answered very sillily, though his faults to me seem only
great omissions. Lord Arlington and Coventry very severe against him;
the former saying that, if he was not guilty, the world would think them
all guilty.

[Pett was made a scapegoat. This is confirmed by Marvel:

"After this loss, to relish discontent,
Some one must be accused by Parliament;
All our miscarriages on Pett must fall,
His name alone seems fit to answer all.
Whose counsel first did this mad war beget?
Who all commands sold th