The Diary by Samuel Pepys (children's ebooks online TXT) 📕

Mr. Clerke, the solicitor, and one of the Auditor’s clerks to discourse about the form of making up my accounts for the Exchequer, which did give me good satisfaction, and so after dinner, my wife, and Mercer, who grows fat, and Willett, and I, to the King’s house, and there saw The Committee, a play I like well, and so at night home and to the office, and so to my chamber about my accounts, and then to Sir W. Penn’s to speak with Sir John Chichly, who desired my advice about a prize which he hath begged of the King, and there had a great deal of his foolish talk of ladies and love and I know not what, and so home to supper and to bed.

29th. Up, and at the office, my Lord Bruncker and I close together till almost 3 after noon, never stirring, making up a report for the Committee this afternoon about the business of discharging men by ticket, which it seems the House is mighty earnest in, but is a foolery in itself, yet gives me a great deal of trouble to draw up a defence for the Board, as if it was a crime; but I think I have done it to very good purpose. Then to my Lady Williams’s, with her and my Lord, and there did eat a snapp of good victuals, and so to Westminster Hall, where we find the House not up, but sitting all this day about the method of bringing in the charge against my Lord Chancellor; and at last resolved for a Committee to draw up the heads, and so rose, and no Committee to sit tonight. Here Sir W. Coventry and Lord Bruncker and I did in the Hall (between the two Courts at the top of the Hall) discourse about a letter of [Sir] W. Coventry’s to Bruncker, whereon Bruncker did justify his discharging men by ticket, and insists on one word which Sir W. Coventry would not seem very earnest to have left out, but I did see him concerned, and did after labour to suppress the whole letter, the thing being in itself really impertinent, but yet so it is that [Sir] W. Coventry do not desire to have his name used in this business, and I have prevailed with Bruncker for it. Thence Bruncker and I to the King’s House, thinking to have gone into a box above, for fear of being seen, the King being there, but the play being 3 acts done we would not give 4s., and so away and parted, and I home, and there after a little supper to bed, my eyes ill, and head full of thoughts of the trouble this Parliament gives us.

30th. All the morning till past noon preparing over again our report this afternoon to the Committee of Parliament about tickets, and then home to eat a bit, and then with Sir W. Penn to Whitehall, where we did a very little business with the Duke of York at our usual meeting, only I perceive that he do leave all of us, as the King do those about him, to stand and fall by ourselves, and I think is not without some cares himself what the Parliament may do in matters wherein his honour is concerned. Thence to the Parliament-house; where, after the Committee was sat, I was called in; and the first thing was upon the complaint of a dirty slut that was there, about a ticket which she had lost, and had applied herself to me for another.⁠ ⁠… I did give them a short and satisfactory answer to that; and so they sent her away, and were ashamed of their foolery, in giving occasion to 500 seamen and seamen’s wives to come before them, as there was this afternoon. But then they fell to the business of tickets, and I did give them the best answer I could, but had not scope to do it in the methodical manner which I had prepared myself for, but they did ask a great many broken rude questions about it, and were mightily hot whether my Lord Bruncker had any order to discharge whole ships by ticket, and because my answer was with distinction, and not direct, I did perceive they were not so fully satisfied therewith as I could wish they were. So my Lord Bruncker was called in, and they could fasten nothing on him that I could see, nor indeed was there any proper matter for blame, but I do see, and it was said publicly in the House by Sir T. Clerges that Sir W. Batten had designed the business of discharging men by ticket and an order after the thing was done to justify my Lord Bruncker for having done it. But this I did not owne at all, nor was it just so, though he did indeed do something like it, yet had contributed as much to it as any man of the board by sending down of tickets to do it. But, Lord! to see that we should be brought to justify ourselves in a thing of necessity and profit to the King, and of no profit or convenience to us, but the contrary. We being withdrawn, we heard no more of it, but there stayed late and do hear no more, only my cousin Pepys do tell me that he did hear one or two whisper as if they thought that I do bogle at the business of my Lord Bruncker, which is a thing I neither did or have reason to do in his favour, but I do not think it fit to make him suffer for a thing that deserves well. But this do trouble me a little that anything should stick to my prejudice in any of them, and did trouble me so much that all the way