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

it: besides that, my duty to my master the Duke of York is such, that I will perish before I will do anything to displease or disoblige him, where the very necessity of the kingdom do not in my judgment call me.” Thence I home and to the office, where my Lord Anglesey, and all the discourse was yesterday’s vote in the Commons, wherein he told us that, should the Lords yield to what the Commons would have in this matter, it were to make them worse than any justice of Peace (whereas they are the highest Court in the Kingdom) that they cannot be judges whether an offender be to be committed or bailed, which every justice of Peace do do, and then he showed me precedents plain in their defence. At noon home to dinner, and busy all the afternoon, and at night home, and there met W. Batelier, who tells me the first great news that my Lord Chancellor is fled this day. By and by to Sir W. Penn’s, where Sir R. Ford and he and I met, with Mr. Young and Lewes, about our accounts with my Lady Batten, which prove troublesome, and I doubt will prove to our loss. But here I hear the whole that my Lord Chancellor is gone, and left a paper behind him3765 for the House of Lords, telling them the reason of him retiring, complaining of a design for his ruin. But the paper I must get: only the thing at present is great, and will put the King and Commons to some new counsels certainly. So home to supper and to bed. Sir W. Penn I find in much trouble this evening, having been called to the Committee this afternoon, about the business of prizes. Sir Richard Ford told us this evening an odd story of the basenesse of the late Lord Mayor, Sir W. Bolton,3766 in cheating the poor of the City, out of the collections made for the people that were burned, of £1,800; of which he can give no account, and in which he hath forsworn himself plainly, so as the Court of Aldermen have sequestered him from their Court till he do bring in an account, which is the greatest piece of roguery that they say was ever found in a Lord Mayor. He says also that this day hath been made appear to them that the Keeper of Newgate, at this day, hath made his house the only nursery of rogues, and whores, and pickpockets, and thieves in the world; where they were bred and entertained, and the whole society met: and that, for the sake of the Sheriffes, they durst not this day committ him, for fear of making him let out the prisoners, but are fain to go by artifice to deal with him. He tells me, also, speaking of the new street3767 that is to be made from Guild Hall down to Cheapside, that the ground is already, most of it, bought. And tells me of one particular, of a man that hath a piece of ground lieing in the very middle of the street that must be; which, when the street is cut out of it, there will remain ground enough, of each side, to build a house to front the street. He demanded £700 for the ground, and to be excused paying anything for the melioration of the rest of his ground that he was to keep. The Court consented to give him £700, only not to abate him the consideration: which the man denied; but told them, and so they agreed, that he would excuse the City the £700, that he might have the benefit of the melioration without paying anything for it.3768 So much some will get by having the City burned! But he told me that in other cases ground, by this means, that was not 4d. a-foot before, will now, when houses are built, be worth 15s. a-foot. But he tells me that the common standard now reckoned on between man and man, in places where there is no alteration of circumstances, but only the houses burnt, there the ground, which, with a house on it, did yield £100 a-year, is now reputed worth £33 6s. 8d.; and that this is the common market-price between one man and another, made upon a good and moderate medium.

4th. At the office all the morning. At noon to dinner, and presently with my wife abroad, whom and her girle I leave at Unthanke’s, and so to Whitehall in expectation of waiting on the Duke of York today, but was prevented therein, only at Mr. Wren’s chamber there I hear that the House of Lords did send down the paper which my Lord Chancellor left behind him, directed to the Lords, to be seditious and scandalous; and the Commons have voted that it be burned by the hands of the hangman, and that the King be desired to agree to it. I do hear, also, that they have desired the King to use means to stop his escape out of the nation.3769 Here I also heard Mr. Jermin,3770 who was there in the chamber upon occasion of Sir Thomas Harvy’s telling him of his brother’s having a child, and thereby taking away his hopes (that is, Mr. Jermin’s) of £2,000 a year. He swore, God damn him, he did not desire to have any more wealth than he had in the world, which indeed is a great estate, having all his uncle’s, my Lord St. Alban’s, and my Lord hath all the Queen-Mother’s. But when Sir Thos. Harvy told him that “hereafter you will wish it more;”⁠—“By God,” answers he, “I won’t promise what I shall do hereafter.” Thence into the House, and there spied a pretty woman with spots on her face, well clad, who