The Diary

G. Carteret, “I know what a calf’s head would have done better by half: for his heart and his sword, I have nothing to say to them.” He told us that for certain his head cost the late King his, for it was he that broke off the treaty at Uxbridge. He told us also how great a man he was raised from a private gentleman1855 in France by Monsieur Grandmont,1856 and afterwards by the Cardinall1857 who raised him to be a Lieutenant-general, and then higher; and entrusted by the Cardinall, when he was banished out of France, with great matters, and recommended by him to the Queen1858 as a man to be trusted and ruled by: yet when he came to have some power over the Queen, he begun to dissuade her from her opinion of the Cardinal; which she said nothing to till the Cardinal was returned, and then she told him of it; who told my Lord Digby, “Eh bien, Monsieur, vous estes un fort bon amy donc:” but presently put him out of all; and then he was, from a certainty of coming in two or three years’ time to be Mareschall of France (to which all strangers, even Protestants,1859 and those as often as French themselves, are capable of coming, though it be one of the greatest places in France), he was driven to go out of France into Flanders; but there was not trusted, nor received any kindness from the Prince of Conde, as one to whom also he had been false, as he had been to the Cardinal and Grandmont. In fine, he told us how he is a man of excellent parts, but of no great faith nor judgment, and one very easy to get up to great height of preferment, but never able to hold it. So home and to my musique; and then comes Mr. Creed to me giving me an account of his accounts, how he has now settled them fit for perusal the most strict, at which I am glad. So he and I to bed together.

3rd. Up and he home, and I with Sir J. Minnes and Sir W. Batten by coach to Westminster, to St. James’s, thinking to meet Sir G. Carteret, and to attend the Duke, but he not coming we broke up, and so to Westminster Hall, and there meeting with Mr. Moore he tells me great news that my Lady Castlemaine is fallen from Court, and this morning retired. He gives me no account of the reason of it, but that it is so: for which I am sorry: and yet if the King do it to leave off not only her but all other mistresses, I should be heartily glad of it, that he may fall to look after business. I hear my Lord Digby is condemned at Court for his speech, and that my Lord Chancellor grows great again. Thence with Mr. Creed, whom I called at his chamber, over the water to Lambeth; but could not, it being morning, get to see the Archbishop’s hearse: so he and I walked over the fields to Southwark, and there parted, and I spent half an hour in Mary Overy’s Church,1860 where are fine monuments of great antiquity, I believe, and has been a fine church. Thence to the ’Change, and meeting Sir J. Minnes there, he and I walked to look upon Backwell’s design of making another alley from his shop through over against the Exchange door,1861 which will be very noble and quite put down the other two. So home to dinner and then to the office, and entered in my manuscript book the Victualler’s contract, and then over the water and walked to see Sir W. Penn, and sat with him a while, and so home late, and to my viall. So up comes Creed again to me and stays all night, tomorrow morning being a hearing before the Duke. So to bed full of discourse of his business.

4th. Up by 4 o’clock and sent him to get matters ready, and I to my office looking over papers and mending my manuscript by scraping out the blots and other things, which is now a very fine book. So to St. James’s by water with Sir J. Minnes and Sir W. Batten, I giving occasion to a wager about the tide, that it did flow through bridge, by which Sir W. Batten won 5s. of Sir J. Minnes. At St. James’s we stayed while the Duke made himself ready. Among other things Sir Allen Apsley1862 showed the Duke the Lisbon Gazette in Spanish, where the late victory is set down particularly, and to the great honour of the English beyond measure. They have since taken back Evora,1863 which was lost to the Spaniards, the English making the assault, and lost not more than three men. Here I learnt that the English foot are highly esteemed all over the world, but the horse not so much, which yet we count among ourselves the best; but they abroad have had no great knowledge of our horse, it seems. The Duke being ready, we retired with him, and there fell upon Mr. Creed’s business, where the Treasurer did, like a mad coxcomb, without reason or method run over a great many things against the account, and so did Sir J. Minnes and Sir W. Batten, which the Duke himself and Mr. Coventry and my Lord Barkely and myself did remove, and Creed being called in did answer all with great method and excellently to the purpose (myself I am a little conscious did not speak so well as I purposed and do think I used to do, that is, not so intelligibly and persuasively,