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Copyright

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First published in Great Britain in 2020 by TLS Books

Copyright © Max Hastings 2020

Text from The Diary of Samuel Pepys by Samuel Pepys,

edition originally published in 1893, is in the public domain

Introduction copyright © Max Hastings 2020

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Contents

Cover

About the TLS

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

1665

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

About this Book

About the Author

Enjoyed the book?

Also from TLS Books

About the Publisher

Introduction
By Max Hastings

One summer’s day long ago, a government bureaucrat recorded a resolution to set his worldly affairs in order, ‘the season growing so sickly, that it is much to be feared how a man can ’scape having a share in it – for which the good Lord God bless me, or be fitted to receive it’. This officer of the Crown was, of course, Samuel Pepys, and the year was 1665. Bubonic plague raged, killing thousands a week in London with a population of less than 400,000. Pepys’s great diary lays bare the terrors, horrors and the abyss of ignorance which prevailed almost four centuries ago. But these are matched today under the menace of the coronavirus. Only the rates of mortality, God be thanked – the words the diarist himself would have used – have so far been vastly lower in our own era.

The plague was just one among a procession of disasters and upheavals of Pepys’s time that he recorded in his diary, interwoven with the minutiae of his daily life, between January 1, 1660 and May 31, 1669. He then abandoned the chronicle, which was already over a million words in length, believing that penning it each evening by candlelight was fatally weakening his eyesight. The portrait that he painted of Britain, and more especially of London, is one of the most important historical narratives ever compiled. He details court intrigue, his own role as a key manager of the Royal Navy in the Dutch Wars, the Fire of London and, of course, the plague. Moreover, thanks to the diary we know more about the life and thoughts of its author than those of any other human being until the twentieth century. If he was not a great man, he achieved a great thing.

Born in 1633 in Salisbury Court, off Fleet Street, Pepys was a tailor’s son whose brains, industry and unexpectedly influential connections enabled him to study at St. Paul’s School, and then at Magdalene College, Cambridge. As a teenager he witnessed the execution of King Charles I in 1649, then got his start in government service under the Commonwealth. On October 10, 1655, he married the fourteen-year-old Elisabeth de St. Michel, a descendant of French Huguenot immigrants. Their subsequent relationship was fractious and childless – the latter much to Pepys’s sorrow. His almost obsessively priapic enthusiasms never ceased to include Elisabeth, but also included a long succession of chance encounters and steady relationships, one with the wife of a man who pimped her in pursuit of government custom; another with his wife’s paid companion Deb, whom he loved to distraction.

As a young man Pepys suffered agonies from bladder stones, so great that on March 26, 1658 he bore the mortal risk and terrible pain of having them surgically removed. Every year thereafter, he celebrated and recorded the anniversary of this event, which transformed his health for the better, though bladder problems recurred in his later life. Following the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660, Pepys prospered as a protégé of the Earl of Sandwich. In 1665, the year of this selection from the diary, he rose to become Surveyor of Victuals for the Navy and Secretary of the Tangier Committee, an important body which managed Britain’s short-lived North African colony. In his diary he also wrote constantly about his finances: increasing his own income was a perennial obsession, as it is for most of mankind. Although only mildly corrupt by the standards of government servants of his time, he contrived to become a modestly wealthy man. He noted the irony that 1665, a terrible year for many British people, was an unprecedentedly profitable one for himself.

And so to the devastating outbreak of disease in London, for which Pepys provides the most vivid account. Plagues carried by rat-borne fleas struck European cities every decade or two: those of 1592, 1603, 1625 and 1636 had been notably bad; 1625’s had killed 40,000 Londoners. From the outset, however, 1665 promised worse. The diary recorded the plague’s presence in Amsterdam, then on April 30 comes the first mention of its arrival in London: ‘Great fears of the sickeness here in the City, its being said that two or three houses are already shut up’. The next mention is on May 28, as a footnote to an account of a love intrigue. The seventeen-year-old Lord Rochester had eloped with Elizabeth Malet, a teenage heiress. Pepys’s patroness, Lady Sandwich, was much interested, because she wanted her own son to marry Malet. The diarist wrote: ‘My poor Lady, who is afeared of the sickness and resolved to be gone to the country, is forced to stay in town a day or two or three, to see the event of it’.

Here was an important social clue about plagues: they fell most heavily upon the poor, who had no means of escape from their crowded, filthy city hovels. The rich, by contrast, fled to country estates, as indeed they do to this day. In 1665 the King and Court decamped first to Hampton Court, then to Oxford. Sessions of parliament were postponed, theatres – which Pepys adored – stayed closed until November 1666. The fashion for wigs suffered a temporary eclipse, because of fears that they were made from the hair of plague victims. Pepys lamented the near-disappearance of passage boats from the Thames, because so many watermen were dead. Grass grew among the cobbles in Whitehall, for lack of workmen to remove it.

One notable stay-behind in the City was the great financier Sir Martin Noell, who died on September 28. Ten days later, Pepys reported that Noell’s widow was dead with grief, ‘but it seems that nobody can make anything of his estate, whether he be dead worth anything or no, having dealt in so many things, public and private, as nobody can understand whereabouts his estate is – which is the fate of these great dealers in everything’. The diarist’s tone is sententious, but also vividly twenty-first-century – think hedge-fund managers.

Pepys described a grim walk to the Tower: ‘Lord, how empty the streets are, and melancholy, so many poor sick people, full of sores, and so many sad stories overheard as I walk, everybody talking of this dead, and that man sick, and so many in this place, and so many in that. And they tell me that in Westminster there is never a physician. And but one apothecary left, all being dead’. Pepys’s own man, Dr. Burnett, perished, after performing an autopsy on a plague victim.

In August, Pepys dispatched his wife and her household to rural sanctuary in Woolwich, locking up their spacious house in Seething Lane. He also persuaded the King that the Navy Office should move to Greenwich. Yet he himself continued to travel often into London, and to take extraordinary risks, such as visiting the plague burial pits in Moorfields, to satisfy his consuming curiosity. He worked on for a time at the office in Seething Lane, telling a colleague, an old Cavalier who decamped to Greenwich: ‘you, Sir, took your turn at the sword. I must not therefore grudge to take mine at the pestilence’. Why did he himself not succumb, as he often feared must happen? There has been speculation that he had fluke immunity: Claire Tomalin, in her splendid biography, notes that certain people lack appeal to fleas. Pepys described how, when he shared a bed with a friend in Portsmouth in 1662, ‘all the fleas came to him and not to me’. He was nonetheless deeply alarmed one July day, when his servant Will Hewer lay down on his bed, ‘ill of the head-ache, which put me in extraordinary fear, and I studied all I could to get him out of the house, and set my people’ – meaning the other servants – ‘to do it without discouraging him’.

Word-of-mouth carried most tidings; rumour raged. After Pepys disappeared from London for a time, to visit the fleet on official business, he returned to write: ‘I hear by everybody how much my poor Lord of Sandwich was concerned for me during my silence awhile, lest I had been dead of the plague in this sickly time’. In another entry he recorded: ‘I was in great trouble all this day for my boy Tom, who went to Greenwich yesterday by my order and came not home till tonight – for fear of the plague. But he did come tonight’. Among quack remedies, he chewed tobacco and was given by his friend Lady Carteret a bottle of ‘Plague Water’, probably made with herbs, though he does not record whether he drank it. On September 6, he watched fires burning in the street, ‘as it is through the whole City, by the Lord Mayor’s order’. The City had appointed physicians to advise on palliatives: woodsmoke was their first suggestion.

It is unsurprising that the Lord Mayor was desperate: in the last week of August more than 6,000 deaths were attributed to plague, and Pepys remarked that this was probably an under-estimate, ‘partly from the poor that cannot be taken notice of through the greatness of the number, and partly from the Quakers and others that will not have any [church] bell ring for them … It troubled me to pass by Come Farme, where about 21 people have died of the plague – and three or four days since I saw a dead corpse in a Coffin lie in the close unburied – and a watch is constantly kept there, night and days, to keep the people in’ – here was an early, brutal lockdown, such was harshly enforced upon overwhelmingly poor families – ‘the plague making us cruel as dogs one to another’.

Despite this great catalogue of woe, which persisted until the year’s end, part of the fascination of Pepys’s account is that his spasms of fear and dismay are interspersed with far lengthier passages about his happiness. He was rising fast in the public service, and continued to indulge his passions for buying clothes, books, even a twelve-foot telescope. He wrote deploring the mass burials, but concluded that entry ‘and so to bed, mighty merry’. Passionately gregarious, he continued to revel in his evenings of music, to carouse in taverns, and of course to dally with every woman who would give him countenance. ‘At noon to dinner with my Lord Bruncker, where Sir W. Batten and his wife come by invitation, and very merry we are – only that the discourse of the likelihood of an increase in of the plague this week make us a little sad. But then again, the thought of the late prizes [ships taken from the Dutch, by which Pepys profited] makes us glad’.

In September, he wrote ‘I do end this month with the greatest content, and may say that these last three months, for joy, health, and profit, have been much the greatest that ever I received in all my life in any twelve months almost in my life, having nothing upon me but the consideration of the sickliness of the season during this great plague to mortify me. For all which the Lord God be praised!’. At least 70,000 Londoners had died, more than one in six of the capital’s inhabitants, yet on New Year’s Eve Pepys was still celebrating his prosperity. His wife was back in Seething Lane, and ‘to our great joy the town fills apace, and shops begin to be open again’.

It is important to recall that the plague was only one among a procession of nigh-apocalyptic experiences that Pepys’s generation lived through: the Civil War, Charles I’s execution, the transition from Commonwealth to renewed kingship. Scarcely had Londoners recovered their spirits from the plague when the 1666 Great Fire devastated the city. In the following year, a Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway, its cannon audible at Court, harrowing and humiliating the Royal Navy. Through all these desperate events, Pepys and many of his fellow-countrymen contrived successful lives. His diary is sometimes mocked for its confessions of cupidity and debauchery. Yet absolute frankness about his own feelings, desires and weaknesses is foremost among the qualities that makes this a great work. The Diary is, above all, a monument to courage, the triumph of the human spirit.

After 1665, Pepys continued to prosper, though he suffered his share of sorrows, tragedies and setbacks. His wife Elisabeth died in November 1669, shortly after they had paid a tourist visit to France and the Low Countries. He was promoted to Secretary of the Admiralty Commission in 1673, and elected MP for Castle Rising in Norfolk. Three years later, he became Master of Trinity House and in 1684 President of the Royal Society. He nonetheless suffered severe political harassment from people who thought that this fussy, pushy government functionary had become too big for his boots. In 1679, charges were brought against him, fabricated probably by Lord Shaftesbury, that he was a papist who had leaked naval intelligence to France. These obliged him to resign the Secretaryship of the Admiralty until he was cleared. Though restored to favour and to his post in 1684, following the ‘Glorious Revolution’ and ascent to the throne of William and Mary four years later, he was twice imprisoned for some weeks, on suspicion of Jacobitism. Although never convicted, he retired from public life, aged fifty-seven, and ended his life deep in the countryside at Clapham. At his death in 1703, he was buried alongside his wife in St. Olave’s Church in the City.

Pepys bequeathed his superb library of more than 3,000 volumes, including the diary, to his old Cambridge college in their original bookcases. They arrived at Magdalene, where they still repose, accompanied by instructions that the books should be ‘strictly reviewed and where found requiring it, more nicely adjusted’. The six diary manuscripts had been kept in shorthand, a system known as tachygraphy, interspersed with fragments of French, Latin, Italian, Spanish and occasional profanities. At some point in his later life, Pepys made fair copies, and had his loose-leaf notes bound into six volumes. Several bowdlerized versions were published in the nineteenth century, the first by a clergyman who expended three years on decrypting the seventeenth-century shorthand without noticing that the diarist had provided a key, which lay not far down the shelf, in the Pepys Library. The existence of this makes it plain that, while the author wished to conceal his record from his contemporaries, he hoped that it would be read by future generations.

Every edition until the late-twentieth-century omitted the most explicit passages, detailing the diarist’s sexual adventurism. Only in the 1970s was a definitive edition, brilliantly edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews, published in nine volumes with a Companion and Index, one of the great academic publishing achievements of modern times. Latham wrote that Pepys’s descriptions of great events ‘achieve their effect by being something more than superlative reporting; they are written with compassion. As always with Pepys it is people, not literary effect, that matter’. The other famous diarist of that period was John Evelyn – the two men knew each other quite well – but the latter seems a dull dog by comparison with the almost hyperactive tailor’s son.

Modern readers will be attracted to Pepys’s narrative of 1665 chiefly by its account of the impact of the Plague. Yet this volume offers boundless other insights and joys, because its author was a man of such parts. In his professional life, he was an exceptionally able and industrious administrator. He has been hailed by maritime historians as one of the architects of the Royal Navy. Meanwhile, he possessed cultural interests that ranged across every aspect of human endeavour. He was curious about everything, pursuing a relationship with the great Isaac Newton, building his remarkable library, studying the lute, viol, violin, flageolet and recorder.

Many have paid homage to Pepys’s unique work, which is among my own favourite bedside books. His avowed vulnerability, conceit, lust, hope, ambition, jealousy, pettiness; surges of passion, happiness, cruelty, misery; mirror those experienced by almost all mankind. Above all, perhaps, as a lesson for our own times, the diarist’s accustomed bedfellow was fear: of mortal disease, poverty, unemployment, revolution, invasion, natural disaster. The Plague of 1665 cannot be compared in scale to the Covid-19 outbreak of 2020, because the former killed a vastly higher proportion of its victims, and a far greater percentage of the population of London, and indeed every European city that it struck. Conversely, it was not a worldwide scourge, as is today’s virus: the peoples of the seventeenth century did not voyage as we do; indeed, remoteness spared many English rural communities from infection. All the same, the perils faced by all mankind for centuries are reflected in his pages, which also serve to remind us how privileged has been the condition of our own recent generations, by comparison with those which has gone before. Pepys’s account of his life and age is not that of a man for all seasons, but instead that of a man for all centuries.

MAX HASTINGS, May 2020

JANUARY 1665

1st (Lord’s day). Lay long in bed, having been busy late last night, then up and to my office, where upon ordering my accounts and papers with respect to my understanding my last year’s gains and expense, which I find very great, as I have already set down yesterday. Now this day I am dividing my expense, to see what my clothes and every particular has stood me in: I mean all the branches of my expense. At noon a good venison pasty and a turkey to ourselves without anybody so much as invited by us, a thing unusual for so small a family of my condition: but we did it and were very merry. After dinner to my office again, where very late alone upon my accounts, but have not brought them to order yet; and very intricate I find it, notwithstanding my care all the year to keep things in as good method as any man can do. Past 11 o’clock home to supper and to bed.

2nd. Up, and it being a most fine, hard frost I walked a good way toward White-hall; and then being overtaken with Sir W. Penn’s coach, went into it, and with him thither, and there did our usual business with the Duke. Thence, being forced to pay a great deal of money away in boxes (that is, basins at White-hall), I to my barber’s, Gervas, and there had a little opportunity of speaking with my Jane alone, and did give her something, and of herself she did tell me a place where I might come to her on Sunday next, which I will not fail, but to see how modestly and harmlessly she brought it out was very pretty. Thence to the Swan, and there did sport a good while with Herbert’s young kinswoman without hurt, though they being abroad, the old people. Then to the Hall, and there agreed with Mrs. Martin, and to her lodgings which she has now taken to lie in, in Bow Street, pitiful poor things, yet she thinks them pretty, and so they are for her condition I believe good enough. Here I did ‘ce que je voudrais avec’ her most freely; and it having cost 2s in wine and cake upon her, I away, sick of her impudence, and by coach to my Lord Bruncker’s, by appointment, in the Piazza, in Covent-Guarding; where I occasioned much mirth with a ballad I brought with me, made from the seamen at sea to their ladies in town; saying Sir W. Penn, Sir G. Ascue, and Sir J. Lawson made them. Here a most noble French dinner and banquet, the best I have seen this many a day and good discourse. Thence to my bookseller’s and at his binder’s saw Hooke’s book of the Microscope,

[“Micrographia: or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by Magnifying Glasses. London, 1665,” a very remarkable work with elaborate plates, some of which have been used for lecture illustrations almost to our own day. On November 23rd, 1664, the President of the Royal Society was “desired to sign a licence for printing of Mr. Hooke’s microscopical book.” At this time the book was mostly printed, but it was delayed, much to Hooke’s disgust, by the examination of several Fellows of the Society. In spite of this examination the council were anxious that the author should make it clear that he alone was responsible for any theory put forward, and they gave him notice to that effect. Hooke made this clear in his dedication (see Birch’s “History,” vol. i., pp. 490–491)]

which is so pretty that I presently bespoke it, and away home to the office, where we met to do something, and then though very late by coach to Sir Philip Warwicke’s, but having company with him could not speak with him. So back again home, where thinking to be merry was vexed with my wife’s having looked out a letter in Sir Philip Sidny about jealousy for me to read, which she industriously and maliciously caused me to do, and the truth is my conscience told me it was most proper for me, and therefore was touched at it, but took no notice of it, but read it out most frankly. But it stuck in my stomach, and moreover I was vexed to have a dog brought to my house to lime our little bitch, which they make him do in all their sights, which, God forgive me, do stir my jealousy again, though of itself the thing is a very immodest sight. However, to cards with my wife a good while, and then to bed.

3rd. Up, and by coach to Sir Philip Warwicke’s, the street being full of footballs, it being a great frost, and found him and Mr. Coventry walking in St. James’s Park. I did my errand to him about the felling of the King’s timber in the forests, and then to my Lord of Oxford, Justice in Eyre, for his consent thereto, for want whereof my Lord Privy Seal stops the whole business. I found him in his lodgings, in but an ordinary furnished house and room where he was, but I find him to be a man of good discreet replys. Thence to the Coffee-house, where certain news that the Dutch have taken some of our colliers to the North; some say four, some say seven. Thence to the ’Change a while, and so home to dinner and to the office, where we sat late, and then I to write my letters. Then to Sir W. Batten’s, who is going out of town to Harwich tomorrow to set up a light-house there, which he has lately got a patent from the King to set up, that will turn much to his profit. Here very merry, and so to my office again, where very late, and then home to supper and to bed, but sat up with my wife at cards till past two in the morning.

4th. Lay long, and then up and to my Lord of Oxford’s, but his Lordship was in bed at past 10 o’clock: and, Lord help us! so rude a dirty family I never saw in my life. He sent me out word my business was not done, but should [be] against the afternoon. I thence to the Coffee-house, there but little company, and so home to the ’Change, where I hear of some more of our ships lost to the Northward. So to Sir W. Batten’s, but he was set out before I got thither. I sat long talking with my Lady, and then home to dinner. Then came Mr. Moore to see me, and he and I to my Lord of Oxford’s; but not finding him within, Mr. Moore and I to “Love in a Tubb,” which is very merry, but only so by gesture, not wit at all, which methinks is beneath the House. So walked home, it being a very hard frost, and I find myself as heretofore in cold weather to begin to burn within and pimples and pricks all over my body, my pores with cold being shut up. So home to supper and to cards and to bed.

5th. Up, it being very cold and a great snow and frost tonight. To the office, and there all the morning. At noon dined at home, troubled at my wife’s being simply angry with Jane, our cook-maid (a good servant, though perhaps has faults and is cunning), and given her warning to be gone. So to the office again, where we sat late; and then I to my office, and there very late doing business. Home to supper and to the office again, and then late home to bed.

6th. Lay long in bed, but most of it angry and scolding with my wife about her warning Jane our cook-maid to be gone – and upon that she desires to go abroad today to look a place. A very good maid she is and fully to my mind, being neat, only they say a little apt to scold, but I hear her not. To my office all the morning busy. Dined at home. To my office again, being pretty well reconciled to my wife, which I did desire to be, because she had designed much mirth today to end Christmas with among her servants. At night home, being twelfenight, and there chose my piece of cake, but went up to my viall, and then to bed, leaving my wife and people up at their sports, which they continue till morning, not coming to bed at all.

7th. Up and to the office all the morning. At noon dined alone, my wife and family most of them a-bed. Then to see my Lady Batten and sit with her a while, Sir W. Batten being out of town; and then to my office doing very much business very late, and then home to supper and to bed.

8th (Lord’s day). Up betimes, and it being a very fine frosty day, I and my boy walked to White-hall, and there to the Chapel – where one Dr. Beaumont preached a good sermon, and afterwards a brave anthem upon the 150 Psalm, where upon the word “trumpet” very good music was made. So walked to my Lady’s and there dined with her (my boy going home), where much pretty discourse, and after dinner walked to Westminster, and there to the house where Jane Welsh had appointed me; but it being sermon time, they would not let me in, and said nobody was there to speak with me. I spent the whole afternoon walking into the Church and Abbey, and up and down, but could not find her, and so in the evening took a coach and home, and there sat discoursing with my wife, and by and by at supper, drinking some cold drink I think it was, I was forced to go make water and had very great pain after it; but was well by and by and continued so, it being only I think from the drink, or from my straining hard at stool to do more than my body would. So after prayers to bed.

9th. Up, and walked to White-hall, it being still a brave frost, and I in perfect good health, blessed be God! In my way saw a woman that broke her thigh, in her heels slipping up upon the frosty street. To the Duke, and there did our usual work. Here I saw the Royal Society bring their new book, wherein is nobly writ their Charter’ and laws, and comes to be signed by the Duke as a Fellow; and all the Fellows’ hands are to be entered there, and lie as a monument; and the King has put his with the word Founder. Thence I to Westminster, to my barber’s, and found occasion to see Jane, but in presence of her mistress, and so could not speak to her of her failing me yesterday, and then to the Swan to Herbert’s girl, and lost time a little with her. And so took coach, and to my Lord Crew’s and dined with him, who receives me with the greatest respect that could be, telling me that he do much doubt of the success of this war with Holland, we going about it, he doubts, by the instigation of persons that do not enough apprehend the consequences of the danger of it, and therein I do think with him. Holmes was this day sent to the Tower, – [For taking New York from the Dutch.] – but I perceive it is made matter of jest only. But if the Dutch should be our masters, it may come to be of earnest to him, to be given over to them for a sacrifice, as Sir W. Rawly [Raleigh] was. Thence to White-hall to a Tangier Committee, where I was accosted and most highly complimented by my Lord Bellasses,

[John Belasyse, second son of Thomas, first Viscount Fauconberg, created Baron Belasyse of Worlaby, January 27th, 1644, Lord Lieutenant of the East Riding of Yorkshire, and Governor of Hull. He was appointed Governor of Tangier, and Captain of the Band of Gentlemen Pensioners. He was a Roman Catholic, and therefore was deprived of all his appointments in 1672 by the provisions of the Test Act, but in 1684 James II made him First Commissioner of the Treasury. He died 1689.]

our new governor, beyond my expectation, or measure I could imagine he would have given any man, as if I were the only person of business that he intended to rely on, and desires my correspondence with him. This I was not only surprised at, but am well pleased with, and may make good use of it. Our patent is renewed, and he and my Lord Berkeley and Sir Thomas Ingram put in as commissioners. Here some business happened which may bring me some profit. Thence took coach and calling my wife at her tailor’s (she being come this afternoon to bring her mother some apples, neat’s tongues and brain); I home, and there at my office late with Sir W. Warren, and had a great deal of good discourse and counsel from him, which I hope I shall take, being all for my good in my deportment in my office, yet with all honesty. He gone I home to supper and to bed.

10th. Lay long, it being still very cold, and then to the office, where till dinner, and then home; and by and by to the office, where we sat and were very late, and I writing letters till twelve at night, and then after supper to bed.

11th. Up, and very angry with my boy for lying long a-bed and forgetting his lute. To my office all the morning. At noon to the ’Change, and so home to dinner. After dinner to Gresham College to my Lord Bruncker and Commissioner Pett, taking, Mr. Castle with me there to discourse over his draught of a ship he is to build for us. Where I first found reason to apprehend Commissioner Pett to be a man of an ability extraordinary in any thing, for I found he did turn and wind Castle like a chicken in his business, and that most pertinently and master-like, and great pleasure it was to me to hear them discourse, I of late having studied something thereof, and my Lord Bruncker is a very able person also himself in this sort of business, as owning himself to be a master in the business of all lines and Conicall Sections. Thence home, where very late at my office doing business to my content, though [God] knows with what ado it was that when I was out I could get myself to come home to my business, or when I was there, though late, could stay there from going abroad again. To supper and to bed. This evening, by a letter from Plymouth, I hear that two of our ships, the Leopard and another in the Straits, are lost by running aground, and that three more had like to have been so, but got off, whereof Captain Allen one – and that a Dutch fleet are gone thither; which if they should meet with our lame ships, God knows what would become of them. This I reckon most sad news; God make us sensible of it! This night, when I come home, I was much troubled to hear my poor canary bird, that I have kept these three or four years, is dead.

12th. Up, and to White-hall about getting a privy seal for felling of the King’s timber for the navy, and to the Lords’ House to speak with my Lord Privy Seal about it; and so to the ’Change, where to my last night’s ill news I met more. Spoke with a Frenchman who was taken, but released, by a Dutch man-of-war of thirty-six guns (with seven more of the like or greater ships), off the North Foreland, by Margetts [Margate] – which is a strange attempt, that they should come to our teeth. But the wind being easterly, the wind that should bring our force from Portsmouth will carry them away home. God preserve us against them, and pardon our making them in our discourse so contemptible an enemy! So home and to dinner, where Mr. Hollyard with us dined. So to the office, and there late till 11 at night and more, and then home to supper and to bed.

13th. Up betimes and walked to my Lord Bellasses’s lodgings in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and there he received and discoursed with me in the most respectful manner that could be, telling me what a character of my judgement, and care, and love to Tangier he had received of me, that he desired my advice and my constant correspondence, which he much valued, and in my courtship, in which, though I understand his design very well, and that it is only a piece of courtship, yet it is a comfort to me that I am become so considerable as to have him need to say that to me, which, if I did not do something in the world, would never have been. Here well satisfied I to Sir Philip Warwicke, and there did some business with him; thence to Jervas’s and there spent a little idle time with him, his wife, Jane, and a sweetheart of hers. So to the Hall awhile and thence to the Exchange, where yesterday’s news confirmed, though in a little different manner; but a couple of ships in the Straits we have lost, and the Dutch have been in Margaret [Margate] Road. Thence home to dinner and so abroad and alone to the King’s house, to a play, “The Traytor,” where, unfortunately, I met with Sir W. Penn, so that I must be forced to confess it to my wife, which troubles me. Thence walked home, being ill-satisfied with the present actings of the House, and prefer the other House before this infinitely. To my Lady Batten’s, where I find Pegg Penn, the first time that ever I saw her to wear spots. Here very merry, Sir W. Batten being looked for tonight, but is not yet come from Harwich. So home to supper and to bed.

14th. Up, and to White-hall, where long waited in the Duke’s chamber for a Committee intended for Tangier, but none met, and so I home and to the office, where we met a little, and then to the ’Change, where our late ill news confirmed in loss of two ships in the Straits, but are now the Phoenix and Nonsuch! Home to dinner, thence with my wife to the King’s house, there to see “Vulpone,” a most excellent play; the best I think I ever saw, and well, acted. So with Sir W. Penn home in his coach, and then to the office. So home, to supper, and bed, resolving by the grace of God from this day to fall hard to my business again, after some, a week or fortnight’s, neglect.

15th (Lord’s day). Up, and after a little at my office to prepare a fresh draft of my vows for the next year, I to church, where a most insipid young coxcomb preached. Then home to dinner, and after dinner to read in “Rushworth’s Collections” about the charge against the late Duke of Buckingham, in order to the fitting me to speak and understand the discourse anon before the King about the suffering the Turkey merchants to send out their fleet at this dangerous time, when we can neither spare them ships to go, nor men, nor King’s ships to convoy them. At 4 o’clock with Sir W. Penn in his coach to my Lord Chancellor’s, where by and by Mr. Coventry, Sir W. Penn, Sir J. Lawson, Sir G. Ascue, and myself were called in to the King, there being several of the Privy Council, and my Lord Chancellor lying at length upon a couch (of the goute I suppose); and there Sir W. Penn begun, and he had prepared heads in a paper, and spoke pretty well to purpose, but with so much leisure and gravity as was tiresome; besides, the things he said were but very poor to a man in his trade after a great consideration. But it was to purpose, indeed to dissuade the King from letting these Turkey ships to go out: saying (in short) the King having resolved to have 130 ships out by the spring, he must have above 20 of them merchantmen – towards which, he in the whole River could find but 12 or 14, and of them the five ships taken up by these merchants were a part, and so could not be spared. That we should need 30,000 [sailors] to man these 130 ships, and of them in service we have not above 16,000; so we shall need 14,000 more. That these ships will with their convoys carry above 2,000 men, and those the best men that could be got, it being the men used to the Southward that are the best men for war, though those bred in the North among the colliers are good for labour. That it will not be safe for the merchants, nor honourable for the King, to expose these rich ships with his convoy of six ships to go, it not being enough to secure them against the Dutch, who, without doubt, will have a great fleet in the Straits. This, Sir J. Lawson enlarged upon. Sir G. Ascue, he chiefly spoke that the war and trade could not be supported together, and, therefore, that trade must stand still to give way to them. This Mr. Coventry seconded, and showed how the medium of the men the King has one year with another employed in his Navy since his coming, has not been above 3,000 men, or at most 4,000 men; and now having occasion of 30,000, the remaining 26,000 must be found out of the trade of the nation. He showed how the cloaths, sending by these merchants to Turkey, are already bought and paid for to the workmen, and are as many as they would send these twelve months or more; so the poor do not suffer by their not going, but only the merchant, upon whose hands they lie dead; and so the inconvenience is the less. And yet for them he propounded: either the King should, if his Treasure would suffer it, buy them, and showed the loss would not be so great to him – or dispense with the Act of Navigation, and let them be carried out by strangers; and ending that he doubted not but when the merchants saw there was no remedy, they would and could find ways of sending them abroad to their profit. All ended with a conviction (unless future discourse with the merchants should alter it) that it was not fit for them to go out, though the ships be loaded. The King in discourse did ask me two or three questions about my news of Allen’s loss in the Straits, but I said nothing as to the business, nor am not much sorry for it, unless the King had spoke to me as he did to them, and then I could have said something to the purpose I think. So we withdrew, and the merchants were called in. Staying without, my Lord Fitzharding come thither, and fell to discourse of Prince Rupert, and made nothing to say that his disease was the pox and that he must be fluxed, telling the horrible degree of the disease upon him with its breaking out on his head. But above all I observed how he observed from the Prince that courage is not what men take it to be, a contempt of death; “For,” says he, “how chagrined the Prince was the other day when he thought he should die, having no more mind to it than another man. But,” says he, “some men are more apt to think they shall escape than another man in fight, while another is doubtful he shall be hit. But when the first man is sure he shall die, as now the Prince is, he is as much troubled and apprehensive of it as any man else. For,” says he, “since we told him that we believe he would overcome his disease, he is as merry, and swears and laughs and curses, and do all the things of a [man] in health, as ever he did in his life” – which, methought, was a most extraordinary saying before a great many persons there of quality. So by and by with Sir W. Penn home again, and after supper to the office to finish my vows, and so to bed.

16th. Up, and with Sir W. Batten and Sir W. Penn to White-hall, where we did our business with the Duke. Thence I to Westminster Hall and walked up and down. Among others Ned Pickering met me and tells me how active my Lord is at sea, and that my Lord Hinchingbroke is now at Rome, and, by all reports, a very noble and hopeful gentleman. Thence to Mr. Povy’s, and there met Creed, and dined well after his old manner of plenty and curiosity. But I sat in pain to think whether he would begin with me again after dinner with his enquiry after my bill, but he did not, but fell into other discourse, at which I was glad, but was vexed this morning, meeting of Creed, at some bye-questions that he demanded of me about some such thing, which made me fear he meant that very matter, but I perceive he did not. Thence to visit my Lady Sandwich; and so to a Tangier Committee, where a great company of the new Commissioners, Lords, that in behalf of my Lord Bellasses are very loud and busy and call for Povy’s accounts; but it was a most sorrowful thing to see how he answered to questions so little to the purpose, but to his own wrong. All the while I sensible how I am concerned in my bill of £100 and somewhat more. So great a trouble is fear, though in a case that at the worst will bear enquiry. My Lord Berkeley was very violent against Povy. But my Lord Ashly, I observe, is a most clear man in matters of accounts, and most ingeniously did discourse and explain all matters. We broke up, leaving the thing to a Committee of which I am one. Povy, Creed, and I stayed discoursing, I much troubled in mind seemingly for the business, but indeed only on my own behalf, though I have no great reason for it, but so painful a thing is fear. So after considering how to order business, Povy and I walked together as far as the New Exchange and so parted, and I by coach home. To the office a while, then to supper and to bed. This afternoon Secretary Bennet read to the Duke of York his letters, which say that Allen

[Among the State Papers is a letter from Captain Thomas Allin to Sir Richard Fanshaw, dated from “The Plymouth, Cadiz Bay,” December 25th, 1664, in which he writes: “On the 19th attacked with his seven ships left, a Dutch fleet of fourteen, three of which were men-of-war; sunk two vessels and took two others, one a rich prize from Smyrna; the others retired much battered. Has also taken a Dutch prize laden with iron and planks, coming from Lisbon” (“Calendar,” Domestic, 1664–65, p. 122).]

has met with the Dutch Smyrna fleet at Cales, – [The old form of the name Cadiz.] – and sunk one and taken three. How true, or what these ships are, time will show; but it is good news – and the news of our ships being lost is doubted at Cales and Malaga. God send it false!

17th. Up, and walked to Mr. Povy’s by appointment, where I found him and Creed busy about fitting things for the Committee; and thence we to my Lord Ashly’s, where, to see how simply, beyond all patience, Povy did again, by his many words and no understanding, confound himself and his business, to his disgrace, and rendering everybody doubtful of his being either a fool or a knave, is very wonderful. We broke up, all dissatisfied, and referred the business to a meeting of Mr. Sherwin and others to settle, but here it was mighty strange methought to find myself sit here in Committee with my hat on, while Mr. Sherwin stood bare as a clerk, with his hat off to his Lord Ashly and the rest, but I thank God I think myself never a whit the better man for all that. Thence with Creed to the ’Change and Coffee-house, and so home, where a brave dinner, by having a brace of pheasants and very merry about Povy’s folly. So anon to the office, and there sitting very late; and then after a little time at Sir W. Batten’s, where I am mighty great, and could, if I thought it fit, continue so, I to my office again, and there very late, and so home to the sorting of some of my books, and so to bed, the weather becoming pretty warm, and I think and hope the frost will break.

18th. Up, and by and by to my bookseller’s, and there did give thorough direction for the new binding of a great many of my old books, to make my whole study of the same binding, within very few. Thence to my Lady Sandwich’s, who sent for me this morning. Dined with her, and it was to get a letter of hers conveyed by a safe hand to my Lord’s own hand at Portsmouth, which I did undertake. Here my Lady did begin to talk of what she had heard concerning Creed, of his being suspected to be a fanatic and a false fellow. I told her I thought he was as shrewd and cunning a man as any in England, and one that I would fear first should outwit me in anything – to which she readily concurred. Thence to Mr. Povy’s by agreement, and there with Mr. Sherwin, Auditor Beale, and Creed and I hard at it very late about Mr. Povy’s accounts, but such accounts I never did see, or hope again to see in my days. At night, late, they gone, I did get him to put out of this account our sums that are in posse only yet, which he approved of when told, but would never have stayed it if I had been gone. Thence at 9 at night home, and so to supper vexed and my head aching and to bed.

19th. Up, and it being yesterday and today a great thaw, it is not for a man to walk the streets, but took coach and to Mr. Povy’s, and there meeting all of us again agreed upon an answer to the Lords by and by, and thence we did come to Exeter House, and there was a witness of most [base] language against Mr. Povy, from my Lord Peterborough, who is most furiously angry with him, because the other, as a fool, would needs say that the £26,000 was my Lord Peterborough’s account, and that he had nothing to do with it. The Lords did find fault also with our answer, but I think really my Lord Ashly would fain have the outside of an Exchequer, – [This word is blotted, and the whole sentence is confused.] – but when we come better to be examined. So home by coach, with my Lord Berkeley, who, by his discourse, I find do look upon Mr. Coventry as an enemy but yet professes great justice and pains. At home, after dinner to the office, and there sat all the afternoon and evening; and then home to supper and to bed. Memorandum: This day and yesterday, I think it is the change of the weather, I have a great deal of pain, but nothing like what I use to have. I can hardly keep myself loose, but on the contrary am forced to drive away my pain. Here I am so sleepy I cannot hold open my eyes, and therefore must be forced to break off this day’s passages more shortly than I would and should have done. This day was buried (but I could not be there) my cousin Percivall Angier; and yesterday I received the news that Dr. Tom Pepys is dead, at Impington, for which I am but little sorry, not only because he would have been troublesome to us, but a shame to his family and profession; he was such a coxcomb.

20th. Up and to Westminster, where having spoke with Sir Philip Warwicke, I to Jervas, and there I find them all in great disorder about Jane, her mistress telling me secretly that she was sworn not to reveal anything, but she was undone. At last, for all her oath, she told me that she had made herself sure to a fellow that comes to their house that can only fiddle for his living, and did keep him company, and had plainly told her that she was sure to him never to leave him for anybody else. Now they were this day contriving to get her presently to marry one Hayes that was there, and I did seem to persuade her to it – and at last got them to suffer me to advise privately, and by that means had her company and think I shall meet her next Sunday, but I do really doubt she will be undone in marrying this fellow. But I did give her my advice, and so let her do her pleasure, so I have now and then her company. Thence to the Swan at noon, and there sent for a bit of meat and dined, and had my baiser of the fille of the house there, but nothing plus. So took coach and to my Lady Sandwich’s; and so to my bookseller’s and there took home Hooke’s book of microscopy, a most excellent piece, and of which I am very proud. So home, and by and by again abroad with my wife about several businesses, and met at the New Exchange, and there to our trouble found our pretty Doll is gone away to live, they say with her father in the country, but I doubt something worse. So homeward, in my way buying a hare and taking it home, which arose upon my discourse today with Mr. Batten in Westminster Hall, who showed me my mistake that my hare’s foot has not the joint to it; and assures me he never had his cholique since he carried it about him: and it is a strange thing how fancy works, for I no sooner almost handled his foot but my belly began to be loose and to break wind, and whereas I was in some pain yesterday and t’other day, and in fear of more today, I became very well, and so continue. At home to my office a while, and so to supper, read, and to cards, and to bed.

21st. At the office all the morning. Thence my Lord Bruncker carried me as far as Mr. Povy’s, and there I alight and dined, meeting Mr. Sherwin, Creed, &c., there upon his accounts. After dinner they parted and Mr. Povy carried me to Somersett House, and there showed me the Queen-Mother’s chamber and closett, most beautiful places for furniture and pictures; and so down the great stone stair to the garden, and tried the brave echo upon the stairs – which continues a voice so long as the singing three notes, concords, one after another, they all three shall sound in consort together a good while most pleasantly. Thence to a Tangier Committee at White-hall, where I saw nothing ordered by judgement, but great heat and passion and faction now in behalf of my Lord Bellasses, and to the reproach of my Lord Tiviott, and dislike as it were of former proceedings. So away with Mr. Povy, he carrying me homeward to Mark Lane in his coach, a simple fellow I now find him, to his utter shame in his business of accounts, as none but a sorry fool would have discovered himself; and yet, in little light sorry things, very cunning; yet, in the principal, the most ignorant man I ever met with in so great trust as he is. To my office till past 12, and then home to supper and to bed, being now mighty well, and truly I cannot but impute it to my fresh hare’s foot. Before I went to bed I sat up till 2 o’clock in my chamber reading of Mr. Hooke’s Microscopicall Observations, the most ingenious book that ever I read in my life.

22nd (Lord’s day). Up, leaving my wife in bed, being sick of her months, and to church. Thence home, and in my wife’s chamber dined very merry, discoursing, among other things, of a design I have come in my head this morning at church of making a match between Mrs. Betty Pickering and Mr. Hill, my friend the merchant, that loves music and comes to me a’Sundays, a most ingenious and sweet-natured and highly accomplished person. I know not how their fortunes may agree, but their disposition and merits are much of a sort, and persons, though different, yet equally, I think, acceptable. After dinner walked to Westminster, and after being at the Abbey and heard a good anthem well sung there, I, as I had appointed, to the Trumpett, there expecting when Jane Welsh should come, but anon comes a maid of the house to tell me that her mistress and master would not let her go forth, not knowing of my being here, but to keep her from her sweetheart. So being defeated, away by coach home, and there spent the evening prettily in discourse with my wife and Mercer, and so to supper, prayers, and to bed.

23rd. Up, and with Sir W. Batten and Sir W. Penn to White-hall; but there finding the Duke gone to his lodgings at St. James’s for all together, his Duchess being ready to lie in, we to him, and there did our usual business. And here I met the great news confirmed by the Duke’s own relation, by a letter from Captain Allen. First, of our own loss of two ships, the Phoenix and Nonesuch, in the Bay of Gibraltar: then of his, and his seven ships with him, in the Bay of Cales, or thereabouts, fighting with the 34 Dutch Smyrna fleet; sinking the King Salamon, a ship worth a £150,000 or more, some say £200,000, and another; and taking of three merchant-ships. Two of our ships were disabled, by the Dutch unfortunately falling against their will against them; the Advice, Captain W. Poole, and Antelope, Captain Clerke. The Dutch men-of-war did little service. Captain Allen did receive many shots at distance before he would fire one gun, which he did not do till he come within pistol-shot of his enemy. The Spaniards on shore at Cales did stand laughing at the Dutch, to see them run away and flee to the shore, 34 or thereabouts, against eight Englishmen at most. I do purpose to get the whole relation, if I live, of Captain Allen himself. In our loss of the two ships in the Bay of Gibraltar, it is observable how the world do comment upon the misfortune of Captain Moone of the Nonesuch (who did lose, in the same manner, the Satisfaction), as a person that has ill-luck attending him, without considering that the whole fleet was ashore. Captain Allen led the way, and Captain Allen himself writes that all the masters of the fleet, old and young, were mistaken, and did carry their ships aground. But I think I heard the Duke say that Moone, being put into the Oxford, had in this conflict regained his credit, by sinking one and taking another. Captain Seale of the Milford has done his part very well, in boarding the King Salamon, which held out half an hour after she was boarded; and his men kept her an hour after they did master her, and then she sank, and drowned about 17 of her men. Thence to Jervas’s, my mind, God forgive me, running too much after some folly, but ‘elle’ not being within I away by coach to the ’Change, and thence home to dinner. And finding Mrs. Bagwell waiting at the office after dinner, away she and I to a cabaret where she and I have eaten before; and there I had her company ‘toute l’après-dîner’ and had ‘mon plein plaisir’ of ‘elle’. But strange to see how a woman, notwithstanding her greatest pretences of love ‘a son mari’ and religion, may be ‘vaincue’. Thence to the Court of the Turkey Company at Sir Andrew Rickard’s to treat about carrying some men of ours to Tangier, and had there a very civil reception, though a denial of the thing as not practicable with them, and I think so too. So to my office a little; but being minded to make an end of my pleasure today, that I might fallow my business, I did take coach and to Jervas’s again, thinking ‘avoir rencontré’ Jane, ‘mais elle n’était pas dedans’. So I back again and to my office, where I did with great content ‘ferais’ a vow to mind my business, and ‘laisser aller les femmes’ for a month, and am with all my heart glad to find myself able to come to so good a resolution, that thereby I may follow my business, which, and my honour thereby, lies a-bleeding. So home to supper and to bed.

24th. Up and by coach to Westminster Hall and the Parliament House, and there spoke with Mr. Coventry and others about business and so back to the ’Change, where no news more than that the Dutch have, by consent of all the Provinces, voted no trade to be suffered for eighteen months, but that they apply themselves wholly to the war.

[This statement of a total prohibition of all trade, and for so long a period as eighteen months, by a government so essentially commercial as that of the United Provinces, seems extraordinary. The fact was, that when in the beginning of the year 1665 the States General saw that the war with England was become inevitable, they took several vigorous measures, and determined to equip a formidable fleet, and with a view to obtain a sufficient number of men to man it, prohibited all navigation, especially in the great and small fisheries as they were then called, and in the whale fishery. This measure appears to have resembled the embargoes so commonly resorted to in this country on similar occasions, rather than a total prohibition of trade. – B.]

And they say it is very true, but very strange, for we use to believe they cannot support themselves without trade. Thence home to dinner and then to the office, where all the afternoon, and at night till very late; and then home to supper and bed, having a great cold, got on Sunday last by sitting too long with my head bare, for Mercer to comb my hair and wash my ears.

25th. Up, and busy all the morning. Dined at home upon a hare pye, very good meat; and so to my office again, and in the afternoon by coach to attend the Council at White-hall, but come too late, so back with Mr. Gifford, a merchant, and he and I to the Coffee-house, where I met Mr. Hill, and there he tells me that he is to be Assistant to the Secretary of the Prize Office (Sir Ellis Layton), which is to be held at Sir Richard Ford’s, which, methinks, is but something low, but perhaps may bring him something considerable. But it makes me alter my opinion of his being so rich as to make a fortune for Mrs. Pickering. Thence home and visited Sir J. Minnes, who continues ill, but is something better. There he told me what a mad freaking fellow Sir Ellis Layton has been, and is – and once at Antwerp was really mad. Thence to my office late, my cold troubling me and having, by squeezing myself in a coach, hurt my testicles; but I hope will cease its pain without swelling. So home, out of order, to supper and to bed.

26th. Lay, being in some pain, but not much, with my last night’s bruise; but up and to my office, where busy all the morning; the like after dinner till very late, then home to supper and to bed. My wife mightily troubled with the toothache, and my cold not being gone yet, but my bruise yesterday goes away again, and it chiefly occasioned I think now from the sudden change of the weather from a frost to a great rain on a sudden.

27th. Called up by Mr. Creed to discourse about some Tangier business. And he gone, I made me ready and found Jane Welsh, Mr. Jervas’s maid, come to tell me that she was gone from her master, and is resolved to stick to this sweetheart of hers, one Harbing (a very sorry little fellow, and poor), which I did in a word or two endeavour to dissuade her from, but being unwilling to keep her long at my house, I sent her away and by and by followed her to the Exchange, and thence led her about down to the Three Cranes, and there took boat for the Falcon, and at a house looking into the fields there took up and sat an hour or two talking and discoursing and ‘faisant ce que je voudrais quant à la toucher’; but she would not ‘laisser me faire l’autre’ thing, though I did what I ‘pouvais’ to have got her ‘à me le laisser’. But I did enough to ‘faire grand plaisir à moy-même’. Thence having endeavoured to make her think of making herself happy by staying out her time with her master and other counsels, but she told me she could not do it, for it was her fortune to have this man, though she did believe it would be to her ruin – which is a strange, stupid thing, to a fellow of no kind of worth in the world and a beggar to boot. Thence away to boat again and landed her at the Three Cranes again, and I to the Bridge and so home; and after shifting myself, being dirty, I to the ’Change, and thence to Mr. Povy’s and there dined; and thence with him and Creed to my Lord Bellasses’, and there debated a great while how to put things in order against his going; and so with my Lord in his coach to White-hall, and with him to my Lord Duke of Albemarle, finding him at cards. After a few dull words or two, I away to White-hall again, and there delivered a letter to the Duke of York about our Navy business, and thence walked up and down in the gallery, talking with Mr. Slingsby, who is a very ingenious person, about the Mint and coinage of money. Among other things, he argues that there being £700,000 coined in the Rump time, and, by all the Treasurers of that time, it being their opinion that the Rump money was in all payments, one with another, about a tenth part of all their money – “then”, says he, to my question, “the nearest guess we can make is, that the money passing up and down in business is £7,000,000”. To another question of mine he made me fully understand that the old law of prohibiting bullion to be exported is, and ever was, a folly and an injury, rather than good. Arguing thus, that if the exportations exceed importations, then the balance must be brought home in money; which, when our merchants know cannot be carried out again, they will forbear to bring home in money, but let it lie abroad for trade, or keep in foreign banks: or if our importations exceed our exportations, then, to keep credit, the merchants will and must find ways of carrying out money by stealth, which is a most easy thing to do, and is everywhere done; and therefore the law against it signifies nothing in the world. Besides, that it is seen, that where money is free, there is great plenty; where it is restrained, as here, there is a great want, as in Spain. These and many other fine discourses I had from him. Thence by coach home (to see Sir J. Minnes first), who is still sick, and I doubt worse than he seems to be. Mrs. Turner here took me into her closet, and there did give me a glass of most pure water, and showed me her Rocke, which indeed is a very noble thing but a very bawble. So away to my office, where late busy, and then home to supper and to bed.

28th. Up and to my office, where all the morning, and then home to dinner, and after dinner, abroad; walked to Paul’s Churchyard, but my books not bound, which vexed me. So home to my office again, where very late about business, and so home to supper and to bed, my cold continuing in a great degree upon me still. This day I received a good sum of money, due to me upon one score or another from Sir G. Carteret, among others, to clear all my matters about Colours, – [Flags] – wherein a month or two since I was so embarrassed and I thank God I find myself to have got clear, by that commodity, £50 and something more; and earned it with dear pains and care and issuing of my own money, and saved the King near £100 in it.

29th (Lord’s day). Up, and to my office, where all the morning putting papers to rights which now grow upon my hands. At noon dined at home. All the afternoon at my business again. In the evening come Mr. Andrews and Hill, and we up to my chamber and there good music, though my great cold made it the less pleasing to me. Then Mr. Hill (the other going away) and I to supper alone, my wife not appearing, our discourse upon the particular vain humours of Mr. Povy, which are very extraordinary indeed. After supper I to Sir W. Batten’s, where I found him, Sir W. Penn, Sir J. Robinson, Sir R. Ford and Captain Cocke and Mr. Penn, junior. Here a great deal of sorry disordered talk about the Trinity House men, their being exempted from land service. But, Lord, to see how void of method and sense their discourse was, and in what heat, insomuch as Sir R. Ford (who we judged, some of us, to be a little foxed) fell into very high terms with Sir W. Batten, and then with Captain Cocke. So that I see that no man is wise at all times. Thence home to prayers and to bed.

30th. This is solemnly kept as a Fast all over the City, but I kept my house, putting my closett to rights again, having lately put it out of order in removing my books and things in order to being made clean. At this all day, and at night to my office, there to do some business, and being late at it, comes Mercer to me, to tell me that my wife was in bed, and desired me to come home; for they hear, and have, night after night, lately heard noises over their head upon the leads. Now it is strange to think how, knowing that I have a great sum of money in my house, this puts me into a most mighty afright, that for more than two hours, I could not almost tell what to do or say, but feared this and that, and remembered that this evening I saw a woman and two men stand suspiciously in the entry, in the dark; I calling to them, they made me only this answer, the woman said that the men came to see her; but who she was I could not tell. The truth is, my house is mighty dangerous, having so many ways to be come to; and at my windows, over the stairs, to see who goes up and down; but, if I escape tonight, I will remedy it. God preserve us this night safe! So at almost 2 o’clock, I home to my house, and, in great fear, to bed, thinking every running of a mouse really a thief – and so to sleep, very brokenly, all night long, and found all safe in the morning.

31st. Up and with Sir W. Batten to Westminster, where to speak at the House with my Lord Bellasses, and am cruelly vexed to see myself put upon businesses so uncertainly about getting ships for Tangier being ordered, a servile thing, almost every day. So to the ’Change, back by coach with Sir W. Batten, and thence to the Crowne, a tavern hard by, with Sir W. Rider and Cutler, where we alone, a very good dinner. Thence home to the office, and there all the afternoon late. The office being up, my wife sent for me, and what was it but to tell me how Jane carries herself, and I must put her away presently. But I did hear both sides and find my wife much in fault; and the grounds of all the difference is my wife’s fondness of Tom, to the being displeased with all the house beside to defend the boy, which vexes me, but I will cure it. Many high words between my wife and I, but the wench shall go; but I will take a course with the boy, for I fear I have spoiled him already. Thence to the office, to my accounts, and there at once to ease my mind I have made myself debtor to Mr. Povy for the £117/5s got with so much joy the last month, but seeing that it is not like to be kept without some trouble and question, I do even discharge my mind of it; and so if I come now to refund it, as I fear I shall, I shall now be ne’er a whit the poorer for it, though yet it is some trouble to me to be poorer by such a sum than I thought myself a month since. But, however, a quiet mind and to be sure of my own is worth all. The Lord be praised for what I have, which is this month come down to £1257. I stayed up about my accounts till almost two in the morning.

FEBRUARY 1665

1st. Lay long in bed; which made me, going by coach to St. James’s by appointment to have attended the Duke of York and my Lord Bellasses, lose the hopes of my getting something by the hire of a ship to carry men to Tangier. But, however, according to the order of the Duke this morning, I did go to the ’Change, and there after great pains did light of a business with Mr. Gifford and Hubland [Houblon] for bringing me as much as I hoped for, which I have at large expressed in my stating the case of the King’s Fisher [Kingfisher], which is the ship that I have hired, and got the Duke of York’s agreement this afternoon after much pains and not eating a bit of bread till about 4 o’clock. Going home I put in to an ordinary by Temple Barr and there with my boy Tom eat a pullet, and thence home to the office, being still angry with my wife for yesterday’s foolery. After a good while at the office, I with the boy to the Sun behind the Exchange, by agreement with Mr. Young the flag-maker, and there was met by Mr. Hill, Andrews, and Mr. Hubland, a pretty serious man. Here two very pretty savoury dishes and good discourse. After supper a song, or three or four (I having to that purpose carried Lawes’s book), and staying here till 12 o’clock got the watch to light me home, and in a continued discontent to bed. After being in bed, my people come and say there is a great stink of burning, but no smoke. We called up Sir J. Minnes’s and Sir W. Batten’s people, and Griffin, and the people at the madhouse, but nothing could be found to give occasion to it. At this trouble we were till past 3 o’clock, and then the stink ceasing, I to sleep, and my people to bed, and lay very long in the morning.

2nd. Then up and to my office, where till noon and then to the ’Change, and at the Coffee-house with Gifford, Hubland, the Master of the ship, and I read over and approved a charter-party for carrying goods for Tangier, wherein I hope to get some money. Thence home, my head aching for want of rest and too much business. So to the office. At night comes Povy, and he and I to Mrs. Bland’s to discourse about my serving her to help her to a good passage for Tangier. Here I heard her kinswoman sing three or four very fine songs and in good manner, and then home and to supper. My cook-maid Jane and her mistress parted, and she went away this day. I vexed to myself, but was resolved to have no more trouble, and so after supper to my office and then to bed.

3rd. Up, and walked with my boy (whom, because of my wife’s making him idle, I dare not leave at home); walked first to Salisbury court, there to excuse my not being at home at dinner to Mrs. Turner, who I perceive is vexed, because I do not serve her in something against the great feasting for her husband’s Reading – [On his appointment as Reader in Law.] – in helping her to some good penn’orths, but I care not. She was dressing herself by the fire in her chamber, and there took occasion to show me her leg, which indeed is the finest I ever saw, and she not a little proud of it. Thence to my Lord Bellasses; thence to Mr. Povy’s, and so up and down at that end of the town about several businesses, it being a brave frosty day and good walking. So back again on foot to the ’Change, in my way taking my books from binding from my bookseller’s. My bill for the rebinding of some old books to make them suit with my study, cost me, besides other new books in the same bill, £3; but it will be very handsome. At the ’Change did several businesses, and here I hear that news is come from Deal, that the same day my Lord Sandwich sailed thence with the fleet, that evening some Dutch men-of-war were seen on the back side of the Goodwin, and, by all conjecture, must be seen by my Lord’s fleet; which, if so, they must engage. Thence, being invited, to my uncle Wight’s, where the Wights all dined; and, among the others, pretty Mrs. Margaret, who indeed is a very pretty lady; and though by my vow it costs me 12d. a kiss after the first, yet I did adventure upon a couple. So home, and among other letters found one from Jane, that is newly gone, telling me how her mistress won’t pay her her Quarter’s wages, and withal tells me how her mistress will have the boy sit 3 or 4 hours together in the dark telling of stories, but speaks of nothing but only her indiscretion in undervaluing herself to do it, but I will remedy that, but am vexed she should get some body to write so much because of making it public. Then took coach and to visit my Lady Sandwich, where she discoursed largely to me her opinion of a match, if it could be thought fit by my Lord, for my Lady Jemimah, with Sir G. Carteret’s eldest son; but I doubt he has yet no settled estate in land. But I will inform myself, and give her my opinion. Then Mrs. Pickering (after private discourse ended, we going into the other room) did, at my Lady’s command, tell me the manner of a masquerade

[The masquerade at Court took place on the 2nd, and is referred to by Evelyn, who was present, in his Diary. Some amusing incidents connected with the entertainment are related in the Grammont Memoirs (chapter vii.).]

before the King and Court the other day, where six women (my Lady Castlemayne and Duchess of Monmouth being two of them) and six men (the Duke of Monmouth and Lord Arran and Monsieur Blanfort, being three of them) in vizards, but most rich and antique dresses, did dance admirably and most gloriously. God give us cause to continue the mirth! So home, and after a while at my office to supper and to bed.

4th. Lay long in bed discoursing with my wife about her maids, which by Jane’s going away in discontent and against my opinion do make some trouble between my wife and me. But these are but foolish troubles and so not to be set to heart, yet it do disturb me mightily these things. To my office, and there all the morning. At noon, being invited, I to the Sun behind the ’Change, to dinner to my Lord Belasses, where a great deal of discourse with him, and some good. Among others at table he told us a very handsome passage of the King’s sending him his message about holding out the town of Newark, of which he was then governor for the King. This message he sent in a slugg [slow, heavy boat], being writ in cypher, and wrapped up in lead and swallowed. So the messenger come to my Lord and told him he had a message from the King, but it was yet in his belly; so they did give him some physic [laxative], and out it come. This was a month before the King’s flying to the Scots; and therein he told him that at such a day, being the 3rd or 6th of May, he should hear of his being come to the Scots, being assured by the King of France that in coming to them he should be used with all the liberty, honour, and safety that could be desired. And at the just day he did come to the Scots. He told us another odd passage: how the King having newly put out Prince Rupert of his generalship, upon some miscarriage at Bristol, and Sir Richard Willis

[Sir Richard Willis, the betrayer of the Royalists, was one of the “Sealed Knot.” When the Restoration had become a certainty, he wrote to Clarendon imploring him to intercede for him with the king (see Lister’s Life of Clarendon, vol. iii., p. 87).]

of his governorship of Newark, at the entreaty of the gentry of the County, and put in my Lord Bellasses, the great officers of the King’s army mutinied, and come in that manner with swords drawn, into the market-place of the town where the King was; which the King hearing, says, “I must to horse.” And there himself personally, when everybody expected they should have been opposed, the King come, and cried to the head of the mutineers, which was Prince Rupert, “Nephew, I command you to be gone.” So the Prince, in all his fury and discontent, withdrew, and his company scattered, which they say was the greatest piece of mutiny in the world. Thence after dinner home to my office, and in the evening was sent to by Jane that I would give her her wages. So I sent for my wife to my office, and told her that rather than be talked on I would give her all her wages for this Quarter coming on, though two months is behind, which vexed my wife, and we begun to be angry, but I took myself up and sent her away, but was cruelly vexed in my mind that all my trouble in this world almost should arise from my disorders in my family and the indiscretion of a wife that brings me nothing almost (besides a comely person) but only trouble and discontent. She gone I late at my business, and then home to supper and to bed.

5th (Lord’s day). Lay in bed most of the morning, then up and down to my chamber, among my new books, which is now a pleasant sight to me to see my whole study almost of one binding. So to dinner, and all the afternoon with W. Hewer at my office endorsing of papers there, my business having got before me much of late. In the evening comes to see me Mr. Sheply, lately come out of the country, who goes away again tomorrow, a good and a very kind man to me. There come also Mr. Andrews and Hill, and we sang very pleasantly; and so, they being gone, I and my wife to supper, and to prayers and bed.

6th. Up and with Sir J. Minnes and Sir W. Penn to St. James’s, but the Duke is gone abroad. So to White-hall to him, and there I spoke with him, and so to Westminster, did a little business, and then home to the ’Change, where also I did some business, and went off and ended my contract with the Kingfisher I hired for Tangier, and I hope to get something by it. Thence home to dinner, and visited Sir W. Batten, who is sick again, worse than he was, and I am apt to think is very ill. So to my office, and among other things with Sir W. Warren 4 hours or more till very late, talking of one thing or another, and have concluded a firm league with him in all just ways to serve him and myself all I can, and I think he will be a most useful and thankful man to me. So home to supper and to bed. This being one of the coldest days, all say, they ever felt in England; and I this day, under great apprehensions of getting an ague from my putting a suit on that has lain by without airing a great while, and I pray God it do not do me hurt.

7th. Up and to my office, where busy all the morning, and at home to dinner. It being Shrove Tuesday, had some very good fritters. All the afternoon and evening at the office, and at night home to supper and to bed. This day, Sir W. Batten, who has been sick four or five days, is now very bad, so as people begin to fear his death; and I am at a loss whether it will be better for me to have him die, because he is a bad man, or live, for fear a worse should come.

8th. Up and by coach to my Lord Peterborough’s, where anon my Lord Ashly and Sir Thomas Ingram met, and Povy about his accounts, who is one of the most unhappy accountants that ever I knew in all my life, and one that if I were clear in reference to my bill of £117 he should be hanged before I would ever have to do with him, and as he understands nothing of his business himself, so he has not one about him that do. Here late till I was weary, having business elsewhere, and thence home by coach, and after dinner did several businesses and very late at my office, and so home to supper and to bed.

9th. Up and to my office, where all the morning very busy. At noon home to dinner, and then to my office again, where Sir William Petty came, among other things to tell me that Mr. Barlow

[Thomas Barlow, Pepys’s predecessor as Clerk of the Acts, to whom he paid part of the salary. Barlow held the office jointly with Dennis Fleeting.]

is dead; for which, God knows my heart, I could be as sorry as is possible for one to be for a stranger, by whose death he gets £100 per annum, he being a worthy, honest man; but after having considered that when I come to consider the providence of God by this means unexpectedly to give me £100 a year more in my estate, I have cause to bless God, and do it from the bottom of my heart. So home late at night, after 12 o’clock, and so to bed.

10th. Up and abroad to Paul’s Churchyard, there to see the last of my books new bound: among others, my Court of King James,

[The Court and Character of King James, written and taken by Sir Anthony Weldon, being an eye and eare witnesse was published in 1650, and reprinted in 1651 under the title of Truth brought to Light Weldon’s book was answered in a work entitled Aulicus Coquinariae. Both the original book and the answer were reprinted in The Secret History of the Court of King James, Edinburgh, 1811, two vols. (edited by Sir Walter Scott).]

and The Rise and Fall of the Family of the Stewarts; and much pleased I am now with my study; it being, methinks, a beautiful sight. Thence (in Mr. Grey’s coach, who took me up), to Westminster, where I heard that yesterday the King met the Houses to pass the great bill for the £2,500,000. After doing a little business I home, where Mr. Moore dined with me, and evened our reckonings on my Lord Sandwich’s bond to me for principal and interest. So that now on both there is remaining due to me £257/7s, and I bless God it is no more. So all the afternoon at my office, and late home to supper, prayers, and to bed.

11th. Up and to my office, where all the morning. At noon to ’Change by coach with my Lord Brunkard, and thence after doing much business home to dinner, and so to my office all the afternoon till past 12 at night very busy. So home to bed.

12th (Lord’s day). Up and to church to St. Lawrence to hear Dr. Wilkins, the great scholar, for curiosity, I having never heard him: but was not satisfied with him at all. Only a gentleman sat in the pew I by chance sat in, that sang most excellently, and afterward I found by his face that he had been a Paul’s scholar, but know not his name, and I was also well pleased with the church, it being a very fine church. So home to dinner, and then to my office all the afternoon doing of business, and in the evening comes Mr. Hill (but no Andrews) and we spent the evening very finely, singing, supping and discoursing. Then to prayers and to bed.

13th. Up and to St. James’s, did our usual business before the Duke. Thence I to Westminster and by water (taking Mr. Stapely the rope-maker by the way), to his rope-ground and to Limehouse, there to see the manner of stoves and did excellently inform myself therein, and coming home did go on board Sir W. Petty’s Experiment, which is a brave roomy vessel, and I hope may do well. So went on shore to a Dutch [house] to drink some mum [strong spiced ale], and there light upon some Dutchmen, with whom we had good discourse touching stoveing

[Stoveing, in sail-making, is the heating of the bolt-ropes, so as to make them pliable. – B.]

and making of cables. But to see how despicably they speak of us for our using so many hands more to do anything than they do, they closing a cable with 20, that we use 60 men upon. Thence home and eat something, and then to my office, where very late, and then to supper and to bed. Captain Stokes, it seems, is at last dead at Portsmouth.

14th (St. Valentine). This morning comes betimes Dicke Pen, to be my wife’s Valentine, and come to our bedside. By the same token, I had him brought to my side, thinking to have made him kiss me; but he perceived me, and would not; so went to his Valentine: a notable, stout, witty boy. I up about business, and, opening the door, there was Bagwell’s wife, with whom I talked afterwards, and she had the confidence to say she came with a hope to be time enough to be my Valentine, and so indeed she did, but my oath preserved me from losing any time with her, and so I and my boy abroad by coach to Westminster, where did two or three businesses, and then home to the ’Change, and did much business there. My Lord Sandwich is, it seems, with his fleet at Alborough Bay. So home to dinner and then to the office, where till 12 almost at night, and then home to supper and to bed.

15th. Up and to my office, where busy all the morning. At noon with Creed to dinner to Trinity-house, where a very good dinner among the old sokers, where an extraordinary discourse of the manner of the loss of the Royall Oake coming home from Bantam, upon the rocks of Scilly, many passages therein being very extraordinary, and if I can I will get it in writing. Thence with Creed to Gresham College, where I had been by Mr. Povy the last week proposed to be admitted a member;

[According to the minutes of the Royal Society for February 15th, 1664–65, “Mr. Pepys was unanimously elected and admitted.” Notes of the experiments shown by Hooke and Boyle are given in Birch’s History of the Royal Society, vol. ii., p. 15.]

and was this day admitted, by signing a book and being taken by the hand by the President, my Lord Brunkard, and some words of admittance said to me. But it is a most acceptable thing to hear their discourse, and see their experiments; which were this day upon the nature of fire, and how it goes out in a place where the air is not free, and sooner out where the air is exhausted, which they showed by an engine on purpose. After this being done, they to the Crowne Tavern, behind the ’Change, and there my Lord and most of the company to a club supper; Sir P. Neale, Sir R. Murrey, Dr. Clerke, Dr. Whistler, Dr. Goddard, and others of most eminent worth. Above all, Mr. Boyle today was at the meeting, and above him Mr. Hooke, who is the most, and promises the least, of any man in the world that ever I saw. Here excellent discourse till 10 at night, and then home, and to Sir W. Batten’s, where I hear that Sir Thomas Harvy intends to put Mr. Turner out of his house and come in himself, which will be very hard to them, and though I love him not, yet for his family’s sake I pity him. So home and to bed.

16th. Up, and with Mr. Andrews to White-hall, where a Committee of Tangier, and there I did our victuallers’ business for some more money, out of which I hope to get a little, of which I was glad; but, Lord! to see to what a degree of contempt, nay, scorn, Mr. Povy, through his prodigious folly, has brought himself in his accounts, that if he be not a man of a great interest, he will be kicked out of his employment for a fool, is very strange, and that most deservedly that ever man was; for never any man, that understands accounts so little, ever went through so much, and yet goes through it with the greatest shame and yet with confidence that ever I saw man in my life. God deliver me in my own business of my bill out of his hands, and if ever I foul my fingers with him again let me suffer for it! Back to the ’Change, and thence home to dinner, where Mrs. Hunt dined with me, and poor Mrs. Batters, who brought her little daughter with her, and a letter from her husband, wherein, as a token, the fool presents me very seriously with his daughter for me to take the charge of bringing up for him, and to make my own. But I took no notice to her at all of the substance of the letter, but fell to discourse, and so went away to the office, where all the afternoon till almost one in the morning, and then home to bed.

17th. Up, and it being bitter cold, and frost and snow, which I had thought had quite left us, I by coach to Povy’s, where he told me, as I knew already, how he was handled the other day, and is still, by my Lord Berkeley, and among other things tells me, what I did not know, how my Lord Berkeley will say openly, that he has fought more set fields – [Battles or actions] – than any man in England has done. I did my business with him, which was to get a little sum of money paid, and so home with Mr. Andrews, who met me there, and there to the office. At noon home and there found Lewellin, which vexed me out of my old jealous humour. So to my office, where till 12 at night, being only a little while at noon at Sir W. Batten’s to see him, and had some high words with Sir J. Minnes about Sir W. Warren, he calling him cheating knave, but I cooled him, and at night at Sir W. Penn’s, he being to go to Chatham tomorrow. So home to supper and to bed.

18th. Up, and to the office, where sat all the morning; at noon to the ’Change, and thence to the Royall Oake tavern in Lombard Street, where Sir William Petty and the owners of the double-bottomed boat (the Experiment) did entertain my Lord Brunkard, Sir R. Murrey, myself, and others, with marrow bones and a chine of beef of the victuals they have made for this ship; and excellent company and good discourse: but, above all, I do value Sir William Petty. Thence home; and took my Lord Sandwich’s draft of the harbour of Portsmouth down to Ratcliffe, to one Burston, to make a chart for the King, and another for the Duke, and another for himself, which will be very neat. So home, and till almost 1 o’clock in the morning at my office, and then home to supper and to bed. My Lord Sandwich, and his fleet of twenty-five ships in the Downes, returned from cruising, but could not meet with any Dutchmen.

19th. Lay in bed, it being Lord’s day, all the morning talking with my wife, sometimes pleased, sometimes displeased, and then up and to dinner. All the afternoon also at home, and Sir W. Batten’s, and in the evening comes Mr. Andrews, and we sung together, and then to supper, he not staying, and at supper hearing by accident of my maids their letting in a roguing Scotch woman that haunts the office, to help them to wash and scour in our house, and that very lately, I fell mightily out, and made my wife, to the disturbance of the house and neighbours, to beat our little girl, and then we shut her down into the cellar, and there she lay all night. So we to bed.

20th. Up, and with Sir J. Minnes to attend the Duke, and then we back again and rode into the beginning of my Lord Chancellor’s new house, near St. James’s; which common people have already called Dunkirk-house, from their opinion of his having a good bribe for the selling of that town. And very noble I believe it will be. Near that is my Lord Berkeley beginning another on one side, and Sir J. Denham on the other. Thence I to the House of Lords and spoke with my Lord Bellasses, and so to the ’Change, and there did business, and so to the Sun Tavern, having in the morning had some high words with Sir J. Lawson about his sending of some bailed goods to Tangier, wherein the truth is I did not favour him. But being conscious that some of my profits may come out by some words that fell from him, and to be quiet, I have accommodated it. Here we dined merry; but my club and the rest come to 7s/6d, which was too much. Thence to the office, and there found Bagwell’s wife, whom I directed to go home, and I would do her business, which was to write a letter to my Lord Sandwich for her husband’s advance into a better ship as there should be occasion, which I did, and by and by did go down by water to Deptford, and then down further, and so landed at the lower end of the town, and it being dark privately ‘entrer en la maison de la femme de Bagwell’, and there had ‘sa compagnie’, though with a great deal of difficulty, ‘néanmoins en fin j’avais ma volonté d’elle’. And being sated therewith, I walked home to Redriffe, it being now near 9 o’clock, and there I did drink some strong waters and eat some bread and cheese, and so home, where at my office my wife comes and tells me that she has hired a chamber maid, one of the prettiest maids that ever she saw in her life, and that she is really jealous of me for her, but has ventured to hire her from month to month, but I think she means merrily. So to supper and to bed.

21st. Up, and to the office (having a mighty pain in my forefinger of my left hand, from a strain that it received last night in struggling ‘avec la femme que je’ mentioned yesterday), where busy till noon, and then my wife being busy in going with her woman to a hot-house to bathe herself, after her long being within doors in the dirt, so that she now pretends to a resolution of being hereafter very clean. How long it will hold I can guess. I dined with Sir W. Batten and my Lady, they being nowadays very fond of me. So to the ’Change, and off of the ’Change with Mr. Wayth to a cook’s shop, and there dined again for discourse with him about Hamaccos

[Or hammock-battens: cleats or battens nailed to the sides of a vessel’s beams, from which to suspend the seamen’s hammocks.]

and the abuse now practised in tickets, and more like every day to be, also of the great profit Mr. Fenn makes of his place, he being, though he demands but ½ per cent of all he pays, and that is easily computed, but very little pleased with any man that gives him no more. So to the office, and after office my Lord Brunkard carried me to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and there I with my Lady Sandwich (good lady) talking of innocent discourse of good housewifery and husbands for her daughters, and the luxury and looseness of the times and other such things till past 10 o’clock at night, and so by coach home, where a little at my office, and so to supper and to bed. My Lady tells me how my Lord Castlemayne is coming over from France, and is believed will be made friends with his Lady again. What mad freaks the Maids of Honour at Court have: that Mrs. Jenings, one of the Duchess’s maids, the other day dressed herself like an orange-wench, and went up and down and cried oranges; till falling down, or by such accident, though in the evening, her fine shoes were discerned, and she put to a great deal of shame. That such as these tricks being ordinary and worse among them, thereby few will venture upon them for wives: my Lady Castlemayne will in merriment say that her daughter (not above a year old or two) will be the first maid in the Court that will be married. This day my Lord Sandwich wrote me word from the Downes, that he is like to be in town this week.

22nd. Lay last night alone, my wife after her bathing lying alone in another bed. So cold all night. Up and to the office, where busy all the morning. At noon at the ’Change, busy; where great talk of a Dutch ship in the North put on shore, and taken by a troop of horse. Home to dinner and Creed with me. Thence to Gresham College, where very noble discourse, and thence home busy till past 12 at night, and then home to supper and to bed. Mrs. Bland came this night to take leave of me and my wife, going to Tangier.

23rd. This day, by the blessing of Almighty God, I have lived thirty-two years in the world, and am in the best degree of health at this minute that I have been almost in my life time, and at this time in the best condition of estate that ever I was in; the Lord make me thankful. Up, and to the office, where busy all the morning. At noon to the ’Change, where I hear the most horrid and astonishing news that ever was yet told in my memory: that De Ruyter with his fleet in Guinea has proceeded to the taking of whatever we have – forts, goods, ships, and men – and tied our men back to back, and thrown them all into the sea, even women and children also. This a Swede or Hamburger is come into the River and tells that he saw the thing done.

[Similar reports of the cruelty of the English to the Dutch in Guinea were credited in Holland, and were related by Downing in a letter to Clarendon from the Hague, dated April 14th, 1665 (Lister’s Life of Clarendon, vol. iii., p. 374).]

But, Lord! to see the consternation all our merchants are in is observable, and with what fury and revenge they discourse of it. But I fear it will, like other things, in a few days cool among us. But that which I fear most is the reason why he that was so kind to our men at first should afterward, having let them go, be so cruel when he went further. What I fear is that there he was informed (which he was not before) of some of Holmes’s dealings with his countrymen, and so was moved to this fury. God grant it be not so! But a more dishonourable thing was never suffered by Englishmen, nor a more barbarous done by man, as this by them to us. Home to dinner, and then to the office, where we sat all the afternoon, and then at night to take my final leave of Mrs. Bland, who sets out tomorrow for Tangier, and then I back to my office till past 12, and so home to supper and to bed.

24th. Up, and to my office, where all the morning upon advising again with some fishermen and the water bailiff of the City, by Mr. Coventry’s direction, touching the protections which are desired for the fishermen upon the River, and I am glad of the occasion to make me understand something of it. At noon home to dinner, and all the afternoon till 9 at night in my chamber, and Mr. Hater with me (to prevent being disturbed at the office), to perfect my contract book, which, for want of time, has a long time lain without being entered in as I used to do from month to month. Then to my office, where till almost 12, and so home to bed.

25th. Up, and to the office, where all the morning. At noon to the ’Change; where just before I came, the Swede that had told the King and the Duke so boldly this great lie of the Dutch flinging our men back to back into the sea at Guinea, so particularly, and readily, and confidently, was whipped round the ’Change: he confessing it a lie, and that he did it in hopes to get something. It is said the judges, upon demand, did give it their opinion that the law would judge him to be whipped, to lose his ears, or to have his nose slit but I do not hear that anything more is to be done to him. They say he is delivered over to the Dutch Embassador to do what he pleased with him. But the world do think that there is some design on one side or other, either of the Dutch or French, for it is not likely a fellow would invent such a lie to get money whereas he might have hoped for a better reward by telling something on behalf of us to please us. Thence to the Sun Tavern, and there dined with Sir W. Warren and Mr. Gifford, the merchant: and I hear how N. Colborne, that lately lived and got a great estate there, is gone to live like a prince in the country, and that this Wadlow, that did the like at the Devil by St. Dunstan’s, did go into the country, and there spent almost all he had got, and has now choused this Colborne out of his house, that he might come to his old trade again. But, Lord! to see how full the house is, no room for any company almost to come into it. Thence home to the office, where dispatched much business; at night late home, and to clean myself with warm water; my wife will have me, because she do herself, and so to bed.

26th (Lord’s day). Up and to church, and so home to dinner, and after dinner to my office, and there busy all the afternoon, till in the evening comes Mr. Andrews and Hill, and so home and to singing. Hill stayed and supped with me, and very good discourse of Italy, where he was, which is always to me very agreeable. After supper, he gone, we to prayers and to bed.

27th. Up and to St. James’s, where we attended the Duke as usual. This morning I was much surprised and troubled with a letter from Mrs. Bland, that she is left behind, and much trouble it cost me this day to find out some way to carry her after the ships to Plymouth, but at last I hope I have done it. At noon to the ’Change to inquire what wages the Dutch give in their men-of-war at this day, and I hear for certain they give but 12 guilders at most, which is not full 24s, a thing I wonder at. At home to dinner, and then in Sir J. Minnes’s coach, my wife and I with him, and also Mercer, abroad, he and I to White-hall, and he would have his coach to wait upon my wife on her visits, it being the first time my wife has been out of doors (but the other day to bathe her) several weeks. We to a Committee of the Council to discourse concerning pressing of men; but, Lord! how they meet; never sit down: one comes, now another goes, then comes another; one complaining that nothing is done, another swearing that he has been there these two hours and nobody come. At last it come to this, my Lord Annesly, says he, “I think we must be forced to get the King to come to every committee; for I do not see that we do any thing at any time but when he is here.” And I believe he said the truth and very constant he is at the council table on council-days; which his predecessors, it seems, very rarely did; but thus I perceive the greatest affair in the world at this day is likely to be managed by us. But to hear how my Lord Berkeley and others of them do cry up the discipline of the late times here, and in the former Dutch war is strange, wishing with all their hearts that the business of religion were not so severely carried on as to discourage the sober people to come among us, and wishing that the same law and severity were used against drunkenness as there was then, saying that our evil living will call the hand of God upon us again. Thence to walk alone a good while in St. James’s Park with Mr. Coventry, who I perceive is grown a little melancholy and displeased to see things go as they do so carelessly. Thence I by coach to Ratcliffe highway, to the chart-maker’s, and he has begun my Lord Sandwich’s chart very neatly, and so back again. Coming back I met Colonel Atkins, who in other discourse did offer to give me a piece to receive of me 20s when he proves the late news of the Dutch, their drowning our men, at Guinea, and the truth is I find the generality of the world to fear that there is something of truth in it, and I do fear it too. Thence back by coach to Sir Philip Warwicke’s; and there he did contract with me a kind of friendship and freedom of communication, wherein he assures me to make me understand the whole business of the Treasurer’s business of the Navy, that I shall know as well as Sir G. Carteret what money he has; and will needs have me come to him sometimes, or he meet me, to discourse of things tending to the serving the King: and I am mighty proud and happy in becoming so known to such a man. And I hope shall pursue it. Thence back home to the office a little tired and out of order, and then to supper and to bed.

28th. At the office all the morning. At noon dined at home. After dinner my wife and I to my Lady batten’s, it being the first time my wife had been there, I think, these two years, but I had a mind in part to take away the strangeness, and so we did, and all very quiet and kind. Come home, I to the taking my wife’s kitchen accounts at the latter end of the month, and there find 7s wanting, which did occasion a very high falling out between us, I indeed too angrily insisting upon so poor a thing, and did give her very provoking high words, calling her beggar, and reproaching her friends, which she took very stomachfully and reproached me justly with mine; and I confess, being myself, I cannot see what she could have done less. I find she is very cunning, and when she least shows it has her wit at work; but it is an ill one, though I think not so bad but with good usage I might well bear with it, and the truth is I do find that my being over-solicitous and jealous and froward and ready to reproach her do make her worse. However, I find that now and then a little difference do no hurt, but too much of it will make her know her force too much. We parted after many high words very angry, and I to my office to my month’s accounts, and find myself worth £1,270, for which the Lord God be praised! So at almost 2 o’clock in the morning I home to supper and to bed, and so ends this month, with great expectation of the Hollanders coming forth, who are, it seems, very high and rather more ready than we. God give a good issue to it!

MARCH 1665

1st. Up, and this day being the day that by a promise, a great while ago, made to my wife, I was to give her £20 to lay out in clothes against Easter, she did, notwithstanding last night’s falling out, come to peace with me and I with her, but did boggle mightily at the parting with my money, but at last did give it her, and then she abroad to buy her things, and I to my office, where busy all the morning. At noon I to dinner at Trinity House, and thence to Gresham College, where Mr. Hooke read a second very curious lecture about the late comet; among other things proving very probably that this is the very same comet, that appeared before in the year 1618, and that in such a time probably it will appear again, which is a very new opinion; but all will be in print. Then to the meeting, where Sir G. Carteret’s two sons, his own, and Sir N. Slaning, were admitted of the society: and this day I did pay my admission money, 40s, to the society. Here was very fine discourses and experiments, but I do lack philosophy enough to understand them, and so cannot remember them. Among others, a very particular account of the making of the several sorts of bread in France, which is accounted the best place for bread in the world. So home, where very busy getting an answer to some question of Sir Philip Warwicke touching the expense of the navy, and that being done I by coach at 8 at night with my wife and Mercer to Sir Philip’s and discoursed with him (leaving them in the coach), and then back with them home and to supper and to bed.

2nd. Begun this day to rise betimes before 6 o’clock, and, going down to call my people, found Besse and the girl with their clothes on, lying within their bedding upon the ground close by the fireside, and a candle burning all night, pretending they would rise to scour. This vexed me, but Besse is going and so she will not trouble me long. Up, and by water to Burston about my Lord’s chart, and then home to the office, so there all the morning sitting. At noon dined with Sir W. Batten (my wife being gone again today to buy things, having bought nothing yesterday for lack of Mrs. Pierce’s company), and thence to the office again, where very busy till 12 at night, and vexed at my wife’s staying out so late, she not being at home at 9 o’clock, but at last she is come home, but the reason of her stay I know not yet. So shut up my books, and home to supper and to bed.

3rd. Up, and abroad about several things, among others to see Mr. Peter Honiwood, who was at my house the other day, and I find it was for nothing but to pay me my brother John’s Quarterage. Thence to see Mrs. Turner, who takes it mighty ill I did not come to dine with the Reader, her husband, which, she says, was the greatest feast that ever was yet kept by a Reader, and I believe it was well. But I am glad I did not go, which confirms her in an opinion that I am grown proud. Thence to the ’Change, and to several places, and so home to dinner and to my office, where till 12 at night writing over a discourse of mine to Mr. Coventry touching the fishermen of the Thames upon a reference of that business by him to me concerning their being protected from presse. Then home to supper and to bed.

4th. Up very betimes, and walked, it being bitter cold, to Ratcliffe, to the chart-maker’s and back again. To the office, where we sat all the morning, I, with being empty and full of air and wind, had some pain today. Dined alone at home, my wife being gone abroad to buy some more things. All the afternoon at the office. William Howe came to see me, being come up with my Lord from sea: he is grown a discreet but very conceited fellow. He tells me how little respectfully Sir W. Penn did carry it to my Lord onboard the Duke’s ship at sea; and that Captain Minnes, a favourite of Prince Rupert’s, do show my Lord little respect; but that everybody else esteems my Lord as they ought. I am sorry for the folly of the latter, and vexed at the dissimulation of the former. At night home to supper and to bed. This day was proclaimed at the ’Change the war with Holland.

5th (Lord’s day). Up, and Mr. Burston bringing me by order my Lord’s charts, which he has been making this week. I did take coach and to my Lord Sandwich’s and dined with my Lord; it being the first time he has dined at home since his coming from sea: and a pretty odd demand it was of my Lord to my Lady before me: “How do you, sweetheart? How have you done all this week?” himself taking notice of it to me, that he had hardly seen her the week before. At dinner he did use me with the greatest solemnity in the world, in carving for me, and nobody else, and calling often to my Lady to cut for me; and all the respect possible. After dinner looked over the charts, liked them mightily, and indeed I think he is the most exact man in what he do in the world of that kind. So home again, and there after a song or two in the evening with Mr. Hill, I to my office, and then home to supper and to bed.

6th. Up, and with Sir J. Minnes by coach, it being a most lamentable cold day as any this year, to St. James’s, and there did our business with the Duke. Great preparations for his speedy return to sea. I saw him try on his buff coat and hatpiece covered with black velvet. It troubles me more to think of his venture than of anything else in the whole war. Thence home to dinner, where I saw Besse go away; she having of all wenches that ever lived with us received the greatest love and kindness and good clothes, besides wages, and gone away with the greatest ingratitude. I then abroad to look after my Hamaccos, and so home, and there find our new chambermaid, Mary, come, which instead of handsome, as my wife spoke and still seems to reckon, is a very ordinary wench, I think, and therein was mightily disappointed. To my office, where busy late, and then home to supper and to bed, and was troubled all this night with a pain in my left testicle, that run up presently into my left kidney and there kept aching all night. In great pain.

7th. Up, and was pretty well, but going to the office, and I think it was sitting with my back to the fire, it set me in a great rage again, that I could not continue till past noon at the office, but was forced to go home, nor could sit down to dinner, but betook myself to my bed, and being there a while my pain begun to abate and grow less and less. Anon I went to make water, not dreaming of any thing but my testicle that by some accident I might have bruised as I used to do, but in pissing there come from me two stones, I could feel them, and caused my water to be looked into; but without any pain to me in going out, which makes me think that it was not a fit of the stone at all; for my pain was assuaged upon my lying down a great while before I went to make water. Anon I made water again very freely and plentifully. I kept my bed in good ease all the evening, then rose and sat up an hour or two, and then to bed.

8th. Lay till 8 o’clock, and then, though a bitter cold day, yet I rose, and though my pain and tenderness in my testicle remains a little, yet I do verily think that my pain yesterday was nothing else, and therefore I hope my disease of the stone may not return to me, but void itself in pissing, which God grant, but I will consult my physician. This morning is brought me to the office the sad news of the London, in which Sir J. Lawson’s men were all bringing her from Chatham to the Hope, and thence he was to go to sea in her; but a little a-this-side the buoy of the Nower, she suddenly blew up. About 24 [men] and a woman that were in the round-house and coach saved; the rest, being above 300, drowned, the ship breaking all in pieces, with 80 pieces of brass ordnance. She lies sunk, with her round-house above water. Sir J. Lawson has a great loss in this of so many good chosen men, and many relations among them. I went to the ’Change, where the news taken very much to heart. So home to dinner, and Mr. Moore with me. Then I to Gresham College, and there saw several pretty experiments, and so home and to my office, and at night about 11 home to supper and to bed.

9th. Up and to the office, where we sat all the morning. At noon to dinner at home, and then abroad with my wife. Left her at the New Exchange and I to Westminster, where I hear Mrs. Martin is brought to bed of a boy and christened Charles, which I am very glad of, for I was fearful of being called to be a godfather to it. But it seems it was to be done suddenly, and so I escaped. It is strange to see how a liberty and going abroad without purpose of doing anything do lead a man to what is bad, for I was just upon going to her, where I must of necessity [have] broken my oath or made a forfeit. But I did not, company being (I heard by my porter) with her, and so I home again, taking up my wife, and was set down by her at Paul’s School, where I visited Mr. Crumlum at his house; and, Lord! to see how ridiculous a conceited pedagogue he is, though a learned man, he being so dogmatic in all he do and says. But among other discourse, we fell to the old discourse of Paul’s School; and he did, upon my declaring my value of it, give me one of Lilly’s grammars of a very old impression, as it was in the Catholic times, which I shall much set by. And so, after some small discourse, away and called upon my wife at a linen draper’s shop buying linen, and so home, and to my office, where late, and home to supper and to bed. This night my wife had a new suit of flowered ash-coloured silk, very noble.

10th. Up, and to the office all the morning. At noon to the ’Change, where, very hot, people’s proposal of the City giving the King’ another ship for the London, that is lately blown up, which would be very handsome, and if well managed, might be done; but I fear if it be put into ill hands, or that the courtiers do solicit it, it will never be done. Home to dinner, and thence to the Committee of Tangier at White-hall, where my Lord Barkely and Craven and others; but, Lord! to see how superficially things are done in the business of the Lottery, which will be the disgrace of the Fishery, and without profit. Home, vexed at my loss of time, and thereto my office. Late at night came the two Bellamys, formerly petty warrant Victuallers of the Navy, to take my advice about a Navy debt of theirs for the compassing of which they offer a great deal of money, and the thing most just. Perhaps I may undertake it, and get something by it, which will be a good job. So home late to bed.

11th. Up and to the office, at noon home to dinner, and to the office again, where very late, and then home to supper and to bed. This day returned Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes from Lee Road, where they have been to see the wrecke of the London, out of which, they say, the guns may be got, but the hull of her will be wholly lost, as not being capable of being weighed.

12th (Lord’s day). Up, and borrowing Sir J. Minnes’s coach, to my Lord Sandwich’s, but he was gone abroad. I sent the coach back for my wife, my Lord a second time dining at home on purpose to meet me, he having not dined once at home but those times since his coming from sea. I sat down and read over the Bishop of Chichester’s’ sermon upon the anniversary of the King’s death, much cried up, but, methinks, but a mean sermon. By and by comes in my Lord, and he and I to talk of many things in the Navy, one from another, in general, to see how the greatest things are committed to very ordinary men, as to parts and experience, to do; among others, my Lord Berkeley. We talked also of getting W. Howe to be put into the Muster-Mastership in the room of Creed, if Creed will give way, but my Lord do it without any great gusto, calling Howe a proud coxcomb in passion. Down to dinner, where my wife in her new lace whiske, which, indeed, is very noble, and I much pleased with it, and so my Lady also. Here very pleasant my Lord was at dinner, and after dinner did look over his chart, which Burston has brought him today, and is the last of the three that he will have made. After satisfied with that, he abroad, and I after much discourse with my Lady about Sir G. Carteret’s son, of whom she has some thoughts for a husband for my Lady Jemimah, we away home by coach again, and there sang a good while very pleasantly with Mr. Andrews and Hill. They gone; we to supper, and betimes to bed.

13th. Up betimes, this being the first morning of my promise upon a forfeit not to lie in bed a quarter of an hour after my first waking. Abroad to St. James’s, and there much business, the King also being with us a great while. Thence to the ’Change, and thence with Captain Tayler and Sir W. Warren dined at a house hard by for discourse sake, and so I home, and there meeting a letter from Mrs. Martin desiring to speak with me, I (though against my promise of visiting her) did go, and there found her in her childbed dress desiring my favour to get her husband a place. I stayed not long, but taking Sir W. Warren up at White-hall home, and among other discourse fell to a business which he says shall if accomplished bring me £100. He gone, I to supper and to bed. This day my wife begun to wear light-coloured locks, quite white almost, which, though it makes her look very pretty, yet not being natural, vexes me, that I will not have her wear them. This day I saw my Lord Castlemayne at St. James’s, lately come from France.

14th. Up before 6, to the office, where busy all the morning. At noon dined with Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes, at the Tower, with Sir J. Robinson, at a farewell dinner which he gives Major Holmes at his going out of the Tower, where he has for some time, since his coming from Guinea, been a prisoner, and, it seems, had presented the Lieutenant with 50 pieces yesterday. Here a great deal of good victuals and company. Thence home to my office, where very late, and home to supper and to bed, weary of business.

15th. Up and by coach with Sir W. Batten to St. James’s, where among other things before the Duke, Captain Taylor was called in, and, Sir J. Robinson his accuser not appearing, was acquitted quite from his charge, and declared that he should go to Harwich, which I was very well pleased at. Thence I to Mr. Coventry’s chamber, and there privately an hour with him in discourse of the office, and did deliver to him many notes of things about which he is to get the Duke’s command, before he goes, for the putting of business among us in better order. He did largely own his dependance as to the office upon my care, and received very great expressions of love from him, and so parted with great satisfaction to myself. So home to the ’Change, and thence home to dinner, where my wife being gone down upon a sudden warning from my Lord Sandwich’s daughters to the Hope with them to see the Prince, I dined alone. After dinner to the office, and anon to Gresham College, where, among other good discourse, there was tried the great poison of Maccassa upon a dog,

[“The experiment of trying to poison a dog with some of the Macassar powder in which a needle had been dipped was made, but without success.” – Pepys himself made a communication at this meeting of the information he had received from the master of the Jersey ship, who had been in company of Major Holmes in the Guinea voyage, concerning the pendulum watches (Birch’s History, vol. ii., p. 23).]

but it had no effect all the time we sat there. We anon broke up and I home, where late at my office, my wife not coming home. I to bed, troubled, about 12 or past.

16th. Up and to the office, where we sat all the morning, my wife coming home from the water this morning, having lain with them on board the Prince all night. At noon home to dinner, where my wife told me the unpleasant journey she had yesterday among the children, whose fear upon the water and folly made it very unpleasing to her. A good dinner, and then to the office again. This afternoon Mr. Harris, the sail-maker, sent me a noble present of two large silver candlesticks and snuffers, and a slice to keep them upon, which indeed is very handsome. At night came Mr. Andrews with £36, the further fruits of my Tangier contract, and so to bed late and weary with business, but in good content of mind, blessing God for these his benefits.

17th. Up and to my office, and then with Sir W. Batten to St. James’s, where many come to take leave, as was expected, of the Duke, but he do not go till Monday. This night my Lady Wood died of the small-pox, and is much lamented among the great persons for a good-natured woman and a good wife, but for all that it was ever believed she was as others are. The Duke did give us some commands, and so broke up, not taking leave of him. But the best piece of news is, that instead of a great many troublesome Lords, the whole business is to be left with the Duke of Albemarle to act as Admiral in his stead; which is a thing that do cheer my heart. For the other would have vexed us with attendance, and never done the business. Thence to the Committee of Tangier, where the Duke a little, and then left us and we stayed. A very great Committee, the Lords Albemarle, Sandwich, Barkely, Fitzharding, Peterborough, Ashly, Sir Thomas Ingram, Sir G. Carteret and others. The whole business was the stating of Povy’s accounts, of whom to say no more, never could man say worse himself nor have worse said of him than was by the company to his face; I mean as to his folly, and very reflecting words to his honesty. Broke up without anything but trouble and shame; only, I got my businesses done to the signing of two bills for the Contractors and Captain Taylor, and so came away well pleased, and home, taking up my wife at the ’Change, to dinner. After dinner out again bringing my wife to her father’s again at Charing Cross, and I to the Committee again, where a new meeting of trouble about Povy, who still makes his business worse and worse, and broke up with the most open shame again to him, and high words to him of disgrace that they would not trust him with any more money till he had given an account of this. So broke up. Then he took occasion to desire me to step aside, and he and I by water to London together. In the way, of his own accord, he proposed to me that he would surrender his place of Treasurer to me to have half the profit. The thing is new to me; but the more I think the more I like it, and do put him upon getting it done by the Duke. Whether it takes or no I care not, but I think at present it may have some convenience in it. Home, and there find my wife come home and gone to bed, of a cold got yesterday by water. At the office Bellamy came to me again, and I am in hopes something may be got by his business. So late home to supper and bed.

18th. Up and to the office, where all the morning. At noon to the ’Change, and took Mr. Hill along with me to Mr. Povy’s, where we dined, and showed him the house to his good content, and I expect when we meet we shall laugh at it. But I having business to stay, he went away, and Povy and Creed and I to do some business upon Povy’s accounts all the afternoon till late at night, where, God help him! never man was so confounded, and all his people about him in this world as he and his are. After we had done something [to the] purpose we broke up, and Povy acquainted me before Creed (having said something of it also this morning at our office to me) what he had done in speaking to the Duke and others about his making me Treasurer, and has carried it a great way, so as I think it cannot well be set back. Creed, I perceive, envies me in it, but I think as that will do me no hurt, so if it did I am at a great loss to think whether it were not best for me to let it wholly alone, for it will much disquiet me and my business of the Navy, which in this war will certainly be worth all my time to me. Home, continuing in this doubtful condition what to think of it, but God Almighty do his will in it for the best. To my office, where late, and then home to supper and to bed.

19th (Lord’s day). Mr. Povy sent his coach for me betimes, and I to him, and there to our great trouble do find that my Lord Fitzharding do appear for Mr. Brunkard

[Henry Brouncker, younger brother of William, Viscount Brouncker, President of the Royal Society. He was Groom of the Bedchamber to the Duke of York, and succeeded to the office of Cofferer on the death of William Ashburnham in 1671. His character was bad, and his conduct in the sea-fight of 1665 was impugned. He was expelled from the House of Commons, but succeeded to his brother’s title in 1684. He died in January, 1687.]

to be Paymaster upon Povy’s going out, by a former promise of the Duke’s, and offering to give as much as any for it. This put us all into a great dump, and so we went to Creed’s new lodging in the Mewes, and there we found Creed with his parrot upon his shoulder, which struck Mr. Povy coming by just by the eye, very deep, which, had it hit his eye, had put it out. This a while troubled us, but not proving very bad, we to our business consulting what to do; at last resolved, and I to Mr. Coventry, and there had his most friendly and ingenuous advice, advising me not to decline the thing, it being that that will bring me to be known to great persons, while now I am buried among three or four of us, says he, in the Navy; but do not make a declared opposition to my Lord Fitzharding. Thence I to Creed, and walked talking in the Park an hour with him, and then to my Lord Sandwich’s to dinner, and after dinner to Mr. Povy’s, who has been with the Duke of York, and, by the mediation of Mr. Coventry, the Duke told him that the business shall go on, and he will take off Brunkard, and my Lord Fitzharding is quiet too. But to see the mischief, I hear that Sir G. Carteret did not seem pleased, but said nothing when he heard me proposed to come in Povy’s room, which may learn me to distinguish between that man that is a man’s true and false friend. Being very glad of this news Mr. Povy and I in his coach to Hyde Park, being the first day of the Tour there, where many brave ladies. Among others, Castlemayne lay impudently upon her back in her coach asleep, with her mouth open. There was also my Lady Kerneguy,

[Daughter of William, Duke of Hamilton, wife of Lord Carnegy, who became Earl of Southesk on his father’s death. She is frequently mentioned in the Memoires de Grammont, and in the letters of the second Earl of Chesterfield. – B.]

once my Lady Anne Hambleton, that is said to have given the Duke a clap upon his first coming over. Here I saw Sir J. Lawson’s daughter and husband, a fine couple, and also Mr. Southwell and his new lady, very pretty. Thence back, putting in at Dr. Whore’s, where I saw his lady, a very fine woman. So home, and thither by my desire comes by and by Creed and lay with me, very merry and full of discourse what to do tomorrow, and the conveniences that will attend my having of this place, and I do think they may be very great.

20th. Up, Creed and I, and had Mr. Povy’s coach sent for us, and we to his house where we did some business in order to the work of this day. Povy and I to my Lord Sandwich, who tells me that the Duke is not only a friend to the business, but to me, in terms of the greatest love and respect and value of me that can be thought, which overjoys me. Thence to St. James’s, and there was in great doubt of Brunkard, but at last I hear that Brunkard desists. The Duke did direct Secretary Bennet, who was there, to declare his mind to the Tangier Committee, that he approves of me for Treasurer; and with a character of me to be a man whose industry and discretion he would trust soon as any man’s in England: and did the like to my Lord Sandwich. So to White-hall to the Committee of Tangier, where there were present my Lord of Albemarle, my Lord Peterborough, Sandwich, Berkeley, Fitzharding, Secretary Bennet, Sir Thomas Ingram, Sir John Lawson, Povy and I – where, after other business, Povy did declare his business very handsomely; that he was sorry he had been so unhappy in his accounts, as not to give their Lordships the satisfaction he intended, and that he was sure his accounts are right, and continues to submit them to examination, and is ready to lay down in ready money the fault of his account; and that for the future, that the work might be better done and with more quiet to him, he desired, by approbation of the Duke, he might resign his place to Mr. Pepys. Whereupon, Secretary Bennet did deliver the Duke’s command, which was received with great content and allowance beyond expectation; the Secretary repeating also the Duke’s character of me. And I could discern my Lord Fitzharding was well pleased with me, and signified full satisfaction, and whispered something seriously of me to the Secretary. And there I received their constitution under all their hands presently so that I am already confirmed their Treasurer, and put into a condition of striking of tallies;

[The practice of striking tallies at the Exchequer was a curious survival of an ancient method of keeping accounts. The method adopted is described in Hubert Hall’s Antiquities and Curiosities of the Exchequer, 1891. The following account of the use of tallies, so frequently alluded to in the Diary, was supplied by Lord Braybrooke. Formerly accounts were kept, and large sums of money paid and received, by the King’s Exchequer, with little other form than the exchange or delivery of tallies, pieces of wood notched or scored, corresponding blocks being kept by the parties to the account; and from this usage one of the head officers of the Exchequer was called the tallier, or teller. These tallies were often negotiable; Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, book ii., ch. xi., says that “in 1696 tallies had been at forty, and fifty, and sixty per cent discount, and bank-notes at twenty per cent.” The system of tallies was discontinued in 1824; and the destruction of the old Houses of Parliament, in the night of October 16th, 1834, is thought to have been occasioned by the overheating of the flues, when the furnaces were employed to consume the tallies rendered useless by the alteration in the mode of keeping the Exchequer accounts.]

and all without one harsh word or word of dislike, but quite the contrary; which is a good fortune beyond all imagination. Here we rose, and Povy and Creed and I, all full of joy, thence to dinner, they setting me down at Sir J. Winter’s, by promise, and dined with him; and a worthy fine man he seems to be, and of good discourse. Our business was to discourse of supplying the King with iron for anchors, if it can be judged good enough, and a fine thing it is to see myself come to the condition of being received by persons of this rank, he being, and having long been, Secretary to the Queen-Mother. Thence to Povy’s, and there sat and considered of business a little and then home, where late at it, W. Howe being with me about his business of accounts for his money laid out in the fleet, and he gone, I home to supper and to bed. News is this day come of Captain Allen’s being come home from the Straits, as far as Portland, with eleven of the King’s ships, and about twenty-two of merchantmen.

21st. Up, and my tailor coming to me, did consult all my wardrobe how to order my clothes against next summer. Then to the office, where busy all the morning. At noon to the ’Change, and brought home Mr. Andrews, and there with Mr. Sheply dined, and very merry and a good dinner. Thence to Mr. Povy’s to discourse about settling our business of Treasurer, and I think all things will go very fair between us and to my content, but the more I see the more silly the man seems to me. Thence by coach to the Mewes, but Creed was not there. In our way the coach drove through a lane by Drury Lane, where abundance of loose women stood at the doors, which, God forgive me, did put evil thoughts in me, but proceeded no further, blessed be God. So home, and late at my office, then home and there found a couple of state cups, very large, coming, I suppose each to about £6 a piece, from Burrows the slopseller.

22nd. Up, and to Mr. Povy’s about our business, and thence I to see Sir Philip Warwicke, but could not meet with him. So to Mr. Coventry, whose profession of love and esteem for me to myself was so large and free that I never could expect or wish for more, nor could have it from any man in England, that I should value it more. Thence to Mr. Povy’s, and with Creed to the ’Change and to my house, but, it being washing day, dined not at home, but took him (I being invited) to Mr. Hubland’s, the merchant, where Sir William Petty, and abundance of most ingenious men, owners and freighters of the Experiment, now going with her two bodies to sea. Most excellent discourse. Among others, Sir William Petty did tell me that in good earnest he has in his will left such parts of his estate to him that could invent such and such things. As among others, that could discover truly the way of milk coming into the breasts of a woman; and he that could invent proper characters to express to another the mixture of relishes and tastes. And says, that to him that invents gold, he gives nothing for the philosopher’s stone; “for,” says he “they that find out that will be able to pay themselves. But,” says he, “by this means it is better than to give to a lecture; for here my executors, that must part with this, will be sure to be well convinced of the invention before they do part with their money.” After dinner Mr. Hill took me with Mrs. Hubland, who is a fine gentlewoman, into another room, and there made her sing, which she do very well, to my great content. Then to Gresham College, and there did see a kitling killed almost quite, but that we could not quite kill her, with sucking away the air out of a receiver wherein she was put, and then the air being let in upon her revives her immediately;

[“Two experiments were made for the finding out a way to breathe under water, useful for divers.” The first was on a bird and the second on “a kitling” [kitten] (Birch’s History, vol. ii., p. 25).]

nay, and this air is to be made by putting together a liquor and some body that ferments, the steam of that do do the work. Thence home, and thence to White-hall, where the house full of the Duke’s going tomorrow, and thence to St. James’s, wherein these things fell out: (1) I saw the Duke, kissed his hand, and had his most kind expressions of his value and opinion of me, which comforted me above all things in the world; (2) the like from Mr. Coventry most heartily and affectionately; (3) saw, among other fine ladies, Mrs. Middleton,

[Jane, daughter to Sir Robert Needham, is frequently mentioned in the Grammont Memoirs, and Evelyn calls her “that famous and indeed incomparable beauty” (Diary, August 2nd, 1683). Her portrait is in the Royal Collection amongst the beauties of Charles II’s Court. Sir Robert Needham was related to John Evelyn.]

a very great beauty I never knew or heard of before; (4) I saw Waller the poet, whom I never saw before. So, very late, by coach home with W. Penn, who was there. To supper and to bed, with my heart at rest, and my head very busy thinking of my several matters now on foot, the new comfort of my old Navy business, and the new one of my employment on Tangier.

23rd. Up and to my Lord Sandwich, who follows the Duke this day by water down to the Hope, where the Prince lies. He received me, busy as he was, with mighty kindness and joy at my promotions; telling me most largely how the Duke has expressed on all occasions his good opinion of my service and love for me. I paid my thanks and acknowledgement to him; and so back home, where at the office all the morning. At noon to the ’Change. Home, and Lewellin dined with me. Thence abroad, carried my wife to Westminster by coach, I to the Swan, Herbert’s, and there had much of the good company of Sarah and to my wish, and then to see Mrs. Martin, who was very kind; three weeks of her month of lying in is over. So took up my wife and home, and at my office a while, and thence to supper and to bed. Great talk of noises of guns heard at Deal, but nothing particularly whether in earnest or not.

24th. Up betimes, and by agreement to the Globe tavern in Fleet Street to Mr. Clerke, my solicitor, about the business of my uncle’s accounts, and we went with one Jefferys to one of the Barons (Spelman), and there my accounts were declared and I sworn to the truth thereof to my knowledge, and so I shall after a few formalities be cleared of all. Thence to Povy’s, and there delivered him his letters of greatest import to him that is possible, yet dropped by young Bland, just come from Tangier, upon the road by Sittingburne, taken up and sent to Mr. Pett, at Chatham. Thus everything done by Povy is done with a fatal folly and neglect. Then to our discourse with him, Creed, Mr. Viner, myself and Poyntz about the business of the Workhouse at Clerkenwell, and after dinner went thither and saw all the works there, and did also consult the Act concerning the business and other papers in order to our coming in to undertake it with Povy, the management of the House, but I do not think we can safely meddle with it, at least I, unless I had time to look after it myself, but the thing is very ingenious and laudable. Thence to my Lady Sandwich’s, where my wife all this day, having kept Good Friday very strict with fasting. Here we supped, and talked very merry. My Lady alone with me, very earnest about Sir G. Carteret’s son, with whom I perceive they do desire my Lady Jemimah may be matched. Thence home and to my office, and then to bed.

25th (Lady day). Up betimes and to my office, where all the morning. At noon dined alone with Sir W. Batten, where great discourse of Sir W. Penn, Sir W. Batten being, I perceive, quite out of love with him, thinking him too great and too high, and began to talk that the world do question his courage, upon which I told him plainly I have been told that he was articled against for it, and that Sir H. Vane was his great friend therein. This he was, I perceive, glad to hear. Thence to the office, and there very late, very busy, to my great content. This afternoon of a sudden is come home Sir W. Penn from the fleet, but upon what score I know not. Late home to supper and to bed.

26th (Lord’s day and Easter day). Up (and with my wife, who has not been at church a month or two) to church. At noon home to dinner, my wife and I (Mercer staying to the Sacrament) alone. This is the day seven years which, by the blessing of God, I have survived of my being cut of the stone, and am now in very perfect good health and have long been; and though the last winter has been as hard a winter as any have been these many years, yet I never was better in my life, nor have not, these ten years, gone cool in the summer than I have done all this winter, wearing only a doublet, and a waistcoat cut open on the back; abroad, a cloak and within doors a coat I slipped on. Now I am at a loss to know whether it be my hare’s foot which is my preservative against wind, for I never had a fit of the collique since I wore it, and nothing but wind brings me pain, and the carrying away of wind takes away my pain, or my keeping my back cool; for when I do lie longer than ordinary upon my back in bed, my water the next morning is very hot, or whether it be my taking of a pill of turpentine every morning, which keeps me always loose, or all together, but this I know, with thanks to God Almighty, that I am now as well as ever I can wish or desire to be, having now and then little grudgings of wind, that brings me a little pain, but it is over presently, only I do find that my back grows very weak, that I cannot stoop to write or tell money without sitting but I have pain for a good while after it. Yet a week or two ago I had one day’s great pain; but it was upon my getting a bruise on one of my testicles, and then I did void two small stones, without pain though, and, upon my going to bed and bearing up of my testicles, I was well the next. But I did observe that my sitting with my back to the fire at the office did then, as it do at all times, make my back ache, and my water hot, and brings me some pain. I sent yesterday an invitation to Mrs. Turner and her family to come to keep this day with me, which she granted, but afterward sent me word that it being Sunday and Easter day she desired to choose another and put off this. Which I was willing enough to do; and so put it off as to this day, and will leave it to my own convenience when to choose another, and perhaps shall escape a feast by it. At my office all the afternoon drawing up my agreement with Mr. Povy for me to sign to him tomorrow morning. In the evening spent an hour in the garden walking with Sir J. Minnes, talking of the Chest business, wherein Sir W. Batten deals so unfairly, wherein the old man is very hot for the present, but that zeal will not last nor is to be trusted. So home to supper, prayers, and to bed.

27th. Up betimes to Mr. Povy’s, and there did sign and seal my agreement with him about my place of being Treasurer for Tangier, it being the greatest part of it drawn out of a draft of his own drawing up, only I have added something here and there in favour of myself. Thence to the Duke of Albemarle, the first time that we officers of the Navy have waited upon him since the Duke of York’s going, who has deputed him to be Admiral in his absence. And I find him a quiet heavy man, that will help business when he can, and hinder nothing, and am very well pleased with our attendance on him. I did afterwards alone give him thanks for his favour to me about my Tangier business, which he received kindly, and did speak much of his esteem of me. Thence, and did the same to Sir H. Bennet, who did the like to me very fully, and did give me all his letters lately come from thence for me to read, which I returned in the afternoon to him. Thence to Mrs. Martin, who, though her husband is gone away, as he writes, like a fool into France, yet is as simple and wanton as ever she was, with much I made myself merry and away. So to my Lord Peterborough’s, where Povy, Creed, Williamson, Auditor Beale, and myself, and mighty merry to see how plainly my Lord and Povy did abuse one another about their accounts, each thinking the other a fool, and I thinking they were not either of them, in that point, much in the wrong, though in everything, and even in this manner of reproaching one another, very witty and pleasant. Among other things, we had here the genteelest dinner and the neatest house that I have seen many a day, and the latter beyond anything I ever saw in a nobleman’s house. Thence visited my Lord Berkeley, and did sit discoursing with him in his chamber a good while, and [he] mighty friendly to me about the same business of Tangier. From that to other discourse of the times and the want of money, and he said that the Parliament must be called again soon, and more money raised, not by tax, for he said he believed the people could not pay it, but he would have either a general excise upon everything, or else that every city incorporate should pay a toll into the King’s revenue, as he says it is in all the cities in the world; for here a citizen has no more laid on them than their neighbours in the country, whereas, as a city, it ought to pay considerably to the King for their charter; but I fear this will breed ill blood. Thence to Povy, and after a little talk home to my office late. Then to supper and to bed.

28th. Up betimes and to the office, where we sat all the morning, and I did most of the business there, God wot. Then to the ’Change, and thence to the Coffee-house with Sir W. Warren, where much good discourse for us both till 4 o’clock with great pleasure and content, and then parted and I home to dinner, having eat nothing, and so to my office. At night supped with my wife at Sir W. Penn’s, who is to go back for good and all to the fleet tomorrow. Took leave and to my office, where till 12 at night, and then home to bed.

29th. Up betimes and to Povy’s, where a good while talking about our business; thence abroad into the City, but upon his tally could not get any money in Lombard Street, through the disrepute which he suffers, I perceive, upon his giving up his place, which people think was not choice, but necessity, as indeed it was. So back to his house, after we had been at my house to taste my wine, but my wife being abroad nobody could come at it, and so we were defeated. To his house, and before dinner he and I did discourse of the business of freight, wherein I am so much concerned, above £100 for myself, and in my over hasty making a bill out for the rest for him, but he resolves to move Creed in it, which troubled me much; and Creed by and by comes, and after dinner he did, but in the most cunning ingenious manner, do his business with Creed by bringing it in by the by, that the most subtle man in the world could never have done it better, and I must say that he is a most witty, cunning man and one that I [am] most afeard of in my conversation, though in all serious matters of business the eeriest fool that ever I met with. The bill was produced and a copy given Creed, whereupon he wrote his Intratur upon the original, and I hope it will pass; at least I am now put to it that I must stand by it and justify it, but I pray God it may never come to that test. Thence between vexed and joyed, not knowing what yet to make of it, home, calling for my Lord Cooke’s 3 volumes at my bookseller’s, and so home, where I found a new cook-maid, her name is [Alice], that promises very little. So to my office, where late about drawing up a proposal for Captain Taylor, for him to deliver to the City about his building the new ship, which I have done well, and I hope will do the business, and so home to supper and to bed.

30th. Up, and to my Lord Ashly, but did nothing, and to Sir Philip Warwicke and spoke with him about business, and so back to the office, where all the morning. At noon home to dinner, and thence to the Tangier Committee, where, Lord! to see how they did run into the giving of Sir J. Lawson (who is come to town today to get this business done) £4,000 about his Mole business, and were going to give him 4s per yard more, which arises in the whole Mole to £36,000, is a strange thing, but the latter by chance was stopped, the former was given. Thence to see Mrs. Martin, whose husband being it seems gone away, and as she is informed he has another woman whom he uses, and has long done, as a wife, she is mighty reserved and resolved to keep herself so till the return of her husband, which a pleasant thing to think of her. Thence home, and to my office, where late, and to bed.

31st. Up betimes and walked to my Lord Ashly, and there with Creed after long waiting spoke with him, and was civilly used by him; thence to Sir Philip Warwicke, and then to visit my Lord of Falmouth, who did also receive me pretty civilly, but not as I expected; he, I perceive, believing that I had undertaken to justify Povy’s accounts, taking them upon myself, but I rectified him therein. So to my Lady Sandwich’s to dinner, and up to her chamber after dinner, and there discoursed about Sir G. Carteret’s son, in proposition between us two for my Lady Jemimah. So to Povy, and with him spent the afternoon very busy, till I was weary of following this and neglecting my Navy business. So at night called my wife at my Lady’s, and so home. To my office and there made up my month’s account, which, God be praised! rose to £1,300 – which I bless God for. So after 12 o’clock home to supper and to bed. I find Creed mightily transported by my Lord of Falmouth’s kind words to him, and saying that he has a place in his intention for him, which he believes will be considerable. A witty man he is in every respect, but of no good nature, nor a man ordinarily to be dealt with. My Lady Castlemayne is sick again, people think, slipping her filly.

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