their debts
according to the Treaty. That his instruments in Holland, writing to
our Embassadors about this to Bredagh, they answer them that they do not
know of any thing that they have done therein, but left it just as
it was before. To which, when they answer, that by the treaty their
Lordships had [not] bound our countrymen to pay their debts in prison,
they answer they cannot help it, and we must get them off as cheap as
we can. On this score, they demand L1100 for Sir G. Ascue, and L5000 for
the one province of Zealand, for the prisoners that we have therein. He
says that this is a piece of shame that never any nation committed, and
that our very Lords here of the Council, when he related this matter to
them, did not remember that they had agreed to this article; and swears
that all their articles are alike, as the giving away Polleroon, and
Surinam, and Nova Scotia, which hath a river 300 miles up the country,
with copper mines more than Swedeland, and Newcastle coals, the only
place in America that hath coals that we know of; and that Cromwell did
value those places, and would for ever have made much of them; but
we have given them away for nothing, besides a debt to the King of
Denmarke. But, which is most of all, they have discharged those very
particular demands of merchants of the Guinny Company and others, which
he, when he was there, had adjusted with the Dutch, and come to an
agreement in writing, and they undertaken to satisfy, and that this was
done in black and white under their hands; and yet we have forgiven all
these, and not so much as sent to Sir G. Downing to know what he had
done, or to confer with him about any one point of the treaty, but
signed to what they would have, and we here signed to whatever in grosse
was brought over by Mr. Coventry. And [Sir G. Downing] tells me, just in
these words, "My Lord Chancellor had a mind to keep himself from being
questioned by clapping up a peace upon any terms." When I answered that
there was other privy-councillors to be advised with besides him, and
that, therefore, this whole peace could not be laid to his charge,
he answered that nobody durst say any thing at the council-table but
himself, and that the King was as much afeard of saying any thing there
as the meanest privy-councillor; and says more, that at this day the
King, in familiar talk, do call the Chancellor "the insolent man," and
says that he would not let him speak himself in Council: which i