dinner, where I find Balty come out to see us, but looks like death, and I
do fear he is in a consumption; he has not been abroad many weeks before,
and hath now a well day, and a fit day of the headake in extraordinary
torture. After dinner left him and his wife, they having their mother
hard by and my wife, and I a wet afternoon to White Hall to have seen my
Lady Carteret and Jemimah, but as God would have it they were abroad, and
I was well contented at it. So my wife and I to Westminster Hall, where I
left her a little, and to the Exchequer, and then presently home again,
calling at our man-cooke's for his help to-morrow, but he could not come.
So I home to the office, my people all busy to get a good dinner to-morrow
again. I late at the office, and all the newes I hear I put into a letter
this night to my Lord Bruncker at Chatham, thus:--
"I doubt not of your lordship's hearing of Sir Thomas Clifford's
succeeding Sir H. Pollard' in the Comptrollership of the King's
house; but perhaps our ill, but confirmed, tidings from the
Barbadoes may not [have reached you] yet, it coming but yesterday;
viz., that about eleven ships, whereof two of the King's, the Hope
and Coventry, going thence with men to attack St. Christopher's,
were seized by a violent hurricane, and all sunk--two only of
thirteen escaping, and those with loss of masts, &c. My Lord
Willoughby himself is involved in the disaster, and I think two
ships thrown upon an island of the French, and so all the men, to
500, become their prisoners. 'Tis said, too, that eighteen Dutch
men-of-war are passed the Channell, in order to meet with our Smyrna
ships; and some, I hear, do fright us with the King of Sweden's
seizing our mast-ships at Gottenburgh. But we have too much ill
newes true, to afflict ourselves with what is uncertain. That which
I hear from Scotland is, the Duke of York's saying, yesterday, that
he is confident the Lieutenant-Generall there hath driven them into
a pound, somewhere towards the mountains."
Having writ my letter, I home to supper and to bed, the world being
mightily troubled at the ill news from Barbadoes, and the consequence of
the Scotch business, as little as we do make of it. And to shew how mad
we are at home, here, and unfit for any troubles: my Lord St. John did, a
day or two since, openly pull a gentleman in Westminster Hall by the nose,
one Sir Andrew Henly, while the judges were upon their benches, and the
other gentleman did give him a rap over the pate with his cane, of which
fray the judges, they say, will make a great matter: men are only sorry
the gentle man did proceed to return a blow; for, otherwise, my Lord would
have been soundly fined for the affront, and may be yet for his affront to
the judges.
30th. Up, and with Sir W. Batten to White Hall, and there we did attend
the Duke of York, and had much business with him; and pretty to see, it
being St. Andrew's day, how some few did wear St. Andrew's crosse; but
most did make a mockery at it, and the House of Parliament, contrary to
practice, did sit also: people having no mind to observe the Scotch
saints' days till they hear better newes from Scotland. Thence to
Westminster Hall and the Abbey, thinking as I had appointed to have met
Mrs. Burroughs there, but not meeting her I home, and just overtook my
cozen Roger Pepys, Mrs. Turner, Dicke, and Joyce Norton, coming by
invitation to dine with me. These ladies I have not seen since before the
plague. Mrs. Turner is come to towne to look after her things in her
house, but all is lost. She is quite weary of the country, but cannot get
her husband to let her live here any more, which troubles her mightily.
She was mighty angry with me, that in all this time I never writ to her,
which I do think and take to myself as a fault, and which I have promised
to mend. Here I had a noble and costly dinner for them, dressed by a
man-cooke, as that the other day was, and pretty merry we were, as I could
be with this company and so great a charge. We sat long, and after much
talk of the plenty of her country in fish, but in nothing also that is
pleasing, we broke up with great kindness, and when it begun to be dark we
parted, they in one coach home, and I in another to Westminster Hall,
where by appointment Mrs. Burroughs and I were to meet, but did not after
I had spent the whole evening there. Only I did go drink at the Swan, and
there did meet with Sarah, who is now newly married, and there I did lay
the beginnings of a future 'amour con elle'. . . . . Thence it being
late away called at Mrs. Burroughs' mother's door, and she come out to me,
and I did hazer whatever I would . . . . and then parted, and home, and
after some playing at cards with my wife, we to supper and to bed.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Amending of bad blood by borrowing from a better body
And for his beef, says he, "Look how fat it is"
First their apes, that they may be afterwards their slaves
For a land-tax and against a general excise
I had six noble dishes for them, dressed by a man-cook
In opposition to France, had made us throw off their fashion
Magnifying the graces of the nobility and prelates
Origin in the use of a plane against the grain of the wood
Play on the harpsicon, till she tired everybody
Reading to my wife and brother something in Chaucer
Said that there hath been a design to poison the King
Tax the same man in three or four several capacities
There I did lay the beginnings of a future 'amour con elle'
Too much ill newes true, to afflict ourselves with uncertain
What I had writ foule in short hand