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DIARY     OF                                LONDON

deriand's, and was this evening at the remarriage of
the Duchess of Grafton to the Duke (his Majesty's nat-
ural son), she being now twelve years old. The cere-
mony was performed in my Lord Chamberlain's (her
father's) lodgings at Whitehall by the Bishop of Roches-
ter, his Majesty being present. A sudden and unexpected
thing, when everybody believed the first marriage would
have come to nothing; but, the measure being determined,
I was privately invited by my Lady, her mother, to be
present. I confess I could give her little joy, and so I
plainly told her, but she said the King would have it so,
and there was no going back. This sweetest, most hope-
ful, most beautiful, child, and most virtuous, too, was sacri-
ficed to a boy that had been rudely bred, without any-
thing to encourage them but his Majesty's pleasure. I
pray God the sweet child find it to her advantage, who,
if my augury deceive me not, will in a few years be such a
paragon as were fit to make the wife of the greatest
Prince in Europe! I staid supper, where his Majesty
sat between the Duchess of Cleveland (the mother of the
Duke of Grafton) and the sweet Duchess the bride; there
were several great persons and ladies, without pomp.
My love to my Lord Arlington's family, and the sweet
child made me behold all this with regret, though as the
Duke of Grafton affects the sea, to which I find his
father intends to use him, he may emerge a plain, useful
and robust officer: and were he polished, a tolerable per-
son; for he is exceedingly handsome, by far surpassing
any of the King's other natural issue.

Sth November, 1679. At Sir Stephen Fox's, and was
agreeing for the Countess of Bristol's house at Chelsea,
within ^"500.

iSth November, 1679. I dined at my Lord 'Mayor's,
being desired by the Countess of Sunderland to carry
her thither on a solemn day, that she might see the
pomp and ceremony of this Prince of Citizens, there
never having been any, who for the stateliness of his
palace, prodigious feasting, and magnificence, exceeded
him. This Lord Mayor's acquaintance had been from the
time of his being apprentice to one Mr. Abbot, his unclev
who being a scrivener, and an honest worthy man, one
who was condemned to die at the beginning of the troubles
forty years past, as concerned in the commission ofh, and had endeavored to render them