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

see, there is no other to be hoped for. This do trouble me; but yet it is good luck that the sum is no bigger. He gone, I with my cousin Roger to Westminster Hall; and there we met the House rising: and they have voted my Lord Chief Justice Keeling’s proceedings illegal; but that, out of particular respect to him, and the mediation of a great many, they have resolved to proceed no further against him. After a turn or two with my cousin, I away with Sir W. Warren, who met me here by my desire, and to Exeter House, and there to counsel, to Sir William Turner, about the business of my bargain with my Lady Batten; and he do give me good advice, and that I am safe, but that there is a great many pretty considerations in it that makes it necessary for me to be silent yet for a while till we see whether the ship be safe or no; for she is drove to the coast of Holland, where she now is in the Texell, so that it is not prudence for me yet to resolve whether I will stand by the bargain or no, and so home, and Sir W. Warren and I walked upon Tower Hill by moonlight a great while, consulting business of the office and our present condition, which is but bad, it being most likely that the Parliament will change all hands, and so let them, so I may keep but what I have. Thence home, and there spent the evening at home with my wife and entering my journal, and so to supper and to bed, troubled with my parting with the £200, which I must lend my Lord Sandwich to answer his bill of exchange.

14th. Up and to the office, where busy, and after dinner also to the office again till night, when Mr. Moore come to me to discourse about the £200 I must supply my Lord Hinchingbroke, and I promised him to do it, though much against my will. So home, to supper and to bed.

15th (Lord’s day). Up, and to church, where I heard a German preach, in a tone hard to be understood, but yet an extraordinary good sermon, and wholly to my great content. So home, and there all alone with wife and girle to dinner, and then I busy at my chamber all the afternoon, and looking over my plate, which indeed is a very fine quantity, God knows, more than ever I expected to see of my own, and more than is fit for a man of no better quality than I am. In the evening comes Mrs. Turner to visit us, who hath been long sick, and she sat and supped with us, and after supper, her son Francke being there, now upon the point of his going to the East Indys, I did give him Lex Mercatoria,3786 and my wife my old pair of tweezers, which are pretty, and my book an excellent one for him. Most of our talk was of the great discourse the world hath against my Lady Batten, for getting her husband to give her all, and disinherit his eldest son; though the truth is, the son, as they say, did play the knave with his father when time was, and the father no great matter better with him, nor with other people also. So she gone, we to bed.

16th. Up, and to several places, to pay what I owed. Among others, to my mercer, to pay for my fine camlott cloak, which costs me, the very stuff, almost £6; and also a velvet coat⁠—the outside cost me above £8. And so to Westminster, where I find the House mighty busy upon a petition against my Lord Gerard, which lays heavy things to his charge, of his abusing the King in his Guards; and very hot the House is upon it. I away home to dinner alone with wife and girle, and so to the office, where mighty busy to my great content late, and then home to supper, talk with my wife, and to bed. It was doubtful today whether the House should be adjourned tomorrow or no.

17th. Up, and to the office, where very busy all the morning, and then in the afternoon I with Sir W. Penn and Sir T. Harvy to Whitehall to attend the Duke of York, who is now as well as ever, and there we did our usual business with him, and so away home with Sir W. Penn, and there to the office, where pretty late doing business, my wife having been abroad all day with Mrs. Turner buying of one thing or other. This day I do hear at Whitehall that the Duke of Monmouth is sick, and in danger of the smallpox. So home to supper and to bed.

18th. Up, and to my goldsmith’s in the morning, to look after the providing of £60 for Mr. Moore, towards the answering of my Lord Sandwich’s bill of exchange, he being come to be contented with my lending him £60 in part of it, which pleases me, I expecting to have been forced to answer the whole bill; and this, which I do do, I hope to secure out of the plate, which was delivered into my custody of my Lord’s the other day by Mr. Cooke, and which I did get Mr. Stokes, the goldsmith, last night to weigh at my house, and there is enough to secure £100. Thence home to the office, and there all the morning by particular appointment with Sir W. Penn, Sir R. Ford, and those that are concerned for my Lady Batten (Mr. Wood, Young, and Lewes), to even the accounts of our prize business, and at noon broke up, and to dinner, every man to his