That Holmes, Spragg, and Smith
do all the business, and the old and wiser commanders nothing.
So as Sir Thomas Teddiman (whom the King and all the world speak
well of) is mightily discontented, as being wholly slighted. He
says we lost more after the Prince came, than before too. The
Prince was so maimed, as to be forced to be towed home. He says
all the fleet confess their being chased home by the Dutch; and
yet the body of the Dutch that did it, was not above forty sail
at most. And yet this put us into the fright, as to bring all
our ships on ground. He says, however, that the Duke of
Albemarle is as high almost as ever, and pleases himself to think
that he hath given the Dutch their bellies full, without sense of
what he hath lost us; and talks how he knows now the way to beat
them. But he says, that even Smith himself, one of his
creatures, did himself condemn the late conduct from the
beginning to the end. He tells me further, how the Duke of York
is wholly given up to his new mistress, my Lady Denham, [Miss
Brookes, a relative of the Earl of Bristol, married to Sir J.
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