17th. Up, and to the office, where all the morning till noon getting some
things more ready against the afternoon for the Committee of Accounts,
which did give me great trouble, to see how I am forced to dance after
them in one place, and to answer Committees of Parliament in another. At
noon thence toward the Committee, but meeting with Sir W. Warren in Fleet
Street he and I to the Ordinary by Temple Bar and there dined together,
and to talk, where he do seem to be very high now in defiance of the
Board, now he says that the worst is come upon him to have his accounts
brought to the Committee of Accounts, and he do reflect upon my late
coldness to him, but upon the whole I do find that he is still a cunning
fellow, and will find it necessary to be fair to me, and what hath passed
between us of coldness to hold his tongue, which do please me very well.
Thence to the Committee, where I did deliver the several things they
expected from me, with great respect and show of satisfaction, and my mind
thereby eased of some care. But thence I to Westminster Hall, and there
spent till late at night walking to and again with many people, and there
in general I hear of the great high words that were in the House on
Saturday last, upon the first part of the Committee's Report about the
dividing of the fleete; wherein some would have the counsels of the King
to be declared, and the reasons of them, and who did give them; where Sir
W. Coventry laid open to them the consequences of doing that, that the
King would never have any honest and wise men ever to be of his Council.
They did here in the House talk boldly of the King's bad counsellors, and
how they must be all turned out, and many of them, and better; brought in:
and the proceedings of the Long-Parliament in the beginning of the war
were called to memory: and the King's bad intelligence was mentioned,
wherein they were bitter against my Lord Arlington, saying, among other
things, that whatever Morrice's was, who declared he had but L750 a-year
allowed him for intelligence, the King paid too dear for my Lord