120 APPENDIX. 



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 countrey house, a little beyond Bow, she conjured mee upon 

 Tier knees in the face 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 expence, 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 expence, 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 summ much beneath its value, and as 1 heard 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 500/. 

 or 1000/., 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, wayting oft at their doors among 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 

 Rochester to cutt off above 1 300Z. to pay the workmen for the en- 



