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under ground to give mee the Gartar, and make her a dutchess, as being descended from a noble family in Normandy, which was a truth, and they had so far possest her with this vain imagination, that shee, desiring mee to walk with her privatly into the garden of my country house, a little beyond Bow, she conjured mee upon her knees in the fear of Heaven to promise and swear to grant her a certain request, which was never to ask any thing of the king but let him do as hee pleased. And when I pleaded with her, and foretold her what really fell out afterwards, her answer was this—The misfortune fall upon mee and my children.
The king being restored, all his promises ended in a patent for a baronetcy and a gentleman's place of the privy chamber, which was onely a place of great expense, and cost mee at the coronation 450 pounds in two days. And after I had, by the chancellor's order as from the king delivered up the first letter into his Majesty's own hand, where hee had promised mee the Gartar, &c., I had given mee a pension of 500 pounds per annum out of the post office. But be-ing forced to live at a great expense, and lay out great sums in taking out patents and riding at the coronation, &c., and so run myself in debt, there was one sent to mee to give mee an alarm, that the Duke of York would have the post office settled on him, and my pension would bee lost, and I should do prudently to sell it, and there was a chapman for it, which was Sir Arthur Slingsby, who had it for a sume much beneath its value, and as I hard after-wards, hee bought it for the Lady Green, with the king's money.
Now finding myself disappoynted of all preferment and of any real estate, I betook myself to the mathematicks, and experiments such as I found pleased the king's fancy. And when I had spent 500l. or 1000l., gott sometimes one half, sometimes 2 thirds of what I had expended. Sometimes I had pensions, sometimes none. And care was taken by the ministers of state (under whom I was forced to truckle, waiving of at their doors amoung the footmen) that one thing should bee spent before I gott another. One while I was made a commissioner of excise, paying part of it to one who had procured it. But in a few years being run in debt by chargeable experiments I was forced to part with it. At last, with much ado, I gott those pensions that I have of late years enjoyed, but they being very often stopt, I was at great loss and expence, borrowing money at 50 in the hundred and so anticipating my pension.
About two years before the king's death, hee sent mee into France about that king's water-works, and I borrowed near a thousand pound upon my pension (to repay the dowble to those who lent it) to prepare models and engines of all kinds for that expedition. But I was no sooner arrived there but the lord treasurer by his Majestyes permission stopt all my pensions for three years.
King James did indeed at my return (which was with the loss of above 1300 pistoles, as may appear by the French king's answer to my last petition marked D) take oft the stop off my pension, and ordered the payment of the arrears, but permitted the lord treasurer to Rochester to cutt off above 1300l. to pay the workmen for the en-