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

own home, and to it till late at night again, and we did come to some end, and I am mightily put to it how to order the business of my bargaine, but my industry is to keep it off from discourse till the ship be brought home safe, and this I did do, and so we broke up, she appearing in our debts about £1,500, and so we parted, and I to my business, and home to my wife, who is troubled with the tooth ake, and there however I got her to read to me the History of Algiers, which I find a very pretty book, and so to supper with much pleasure talking, and to bed. The Parliament not adjourned yet.

19th. Up, and to the Office, where Commissioner Middleton first took place at the Board as Surveyor of the Navy; and indeed I think will be an excellent officer; I am sure much beyond what his predecessor was. At noon, to avoid being forced to invite him to dinner, it being his first day, and nobody inviting him, I did go to the ’Change with Sir W. Penn in his coach, who first went to Guildhall, whither I went with him, he to speak with Sheriff Gawden⁠—I only for company; and did here look up and down this place, where I have not been before since the fire; and I see that the city are got a pace on in the rebuilding of Guildhall.3787 Thence to the ’Change, where I stayed very little, and so home to dinner, and there find my wife mightily out of order with her teeth. At the office all the afternoon, and at night by coach to Westminster, to the Hall, where I met nobody, and do find that this evening the King by message (which he never did before) hath passed several bills, among others that for the Accounts, and for banishing my Lord Chancellor, and hath adjourned the House to February; at which I am glad, hoping in this time to get leisure to state my Tangier Accounts, and to prepare better for the Parliament’s enquiries. Here I hear how the House of Lords, with great severity, if not tyranny, have ordered poor Carr, who only erred in the manner of the presenting his petition against my Lord Gerard, it being first printed before it was presented; which was, it, seems, by Colonel Sands’s3788 going into the country, into whose hands he had put it: the poor man is ordered to stand in the pillory two or three times, and his ears cut, and be imprisoned I know not how long.3789 But it is believed that the Commons, when they meet, will not be well pleased with it; and they have no reason, I think. Having only heard this from Mrs. Michell, I away again home, and there to supper and to bed, my wife exceeding ill in her face with the tooth ake, and now her face has become mightily swelled that I am mightily troubled for it.

20th. Up, and all the morning at the office with Sir R. Ford and the same company as on Wednesday about my Lady Batten’s accounts. At noon home to dinner, where my poor wife in bed in mighty pain, her left cheek so swelled as that we feared it would break, and so were fain to send for Mr. Hollier, who come, and seems doubtful of the defluxions of humours that may spoil her face, if not timely cured. He laid a poultice to it and other directions, and so away, and I to the office, where on the same accounts very late, and did come pretty near a settlement. So at night to Sir W. Penn’s with Sir R. Ford, and there was Sir D. Gawden, and there we only talked of sundry things; and I have found of late, by discourse, that the present sort of government is looked upon as a sort of government that we never had yet⁠—that is to say, a King and House of Commons against the House of Lords; for so indeed it is, though neither of the two first care a fig for one another, nor the third for them both, only the Bishops are afeard of losing ground, as I believe they will. So home to my poor wife, who is in mighty pain, and her face miserably swelled: so as I was frighted to see it, and I was forced to lie below in the great chamber, where I have not lain many a day, and having sat up with her, talking and reading and pitying her, I to bed.

21st. At the office all the morning, and at noon home to dinner with my Clerks and Creed, who among other things all alone, after dinner, talking of the times, he tells me that the Nonconformists are mighty high, and their meetings frequented and connived at; and they do expect to have their day now soon; for my Lord of Buckingham is a declared friend to them, and even to the Quakers, who had very good words the other day from the King himself: and, what is more, the Archbishop of Canterbury is called no more to the Cabal,3790 nor, by the way, Sir W. Coventry; which I am sorry for, the Cabal at present being, as he says, the King, and Duke of Buckingham, and Lord Keeper, the Duke of Albemarle, and Privy Seale. The Bishops, differing from the King in the late business in the House of Lords, having caused this and what is like to follow, for everybody is encouraged nowadays to speak, and even to preach, as I have heard one of them, as bad things against them as ever in the year 1640; which is a strange change. He gone, I to