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

and singing, with extraordinary great pleasure, till about two in the morning, and then broke up; and Mrs. Pierce and her family, and Harris and Knepp by coach home, as late as it was. And they gone, I took Mrs. Turner and Hollworthy home to my house, and there gave wine and sweetmeats; but I find Mrs. Hollworthy but a mean woman, I think, for understanding, only a little conceited, and proud, and talking, but nothing extraordinary in person, or discourse, or understanding. However, I was mightily pleased with her being there, I having long longed for to know her, and they being gone, I paid the fiddlers £3 among the four, and so away to bed, weary and mightily pleased, and have the happiness to reflect upon it as I do sometimes on other things, as going to a play or the like, to be the greatest real comfort that I am to expect in the world, and that it is that that we do really labour in the hopes of; and so I do really enjoy myself, and understand that if I do not do it now I shall not hereafter, it may be, be able to pay for it, or have health to take pleasure in it, and so fill myself with vain expectation of pleasure and go without it.

7th. Up, weary, about 9 o’clock, and then out by coach to Whitehall to attend the Lords of the Treasury about Tangier with Sir Stephen Fox, and having done with them I away back again home by coach time enough to dispatch some business, and after dinner with Sir W. Penn’s coach (he being gone before with Sir D. Gawden) to Whitehall to wait on the Duke of York, but I finding him not there, nor the Duke of York within, I away by coach to the Nursery,3824 where I never was yet, and there to meet my wife and Mercer and Willet as they promised; but the house did not act today; and so I was at a loss for them, and therefore to the other two playhouses into the pit, to gaze up and down, to look for them, and there did by this means, for nothing, see an act in The Schoole of Compliments3825 at the Duke of York’s house, and Henry the Fourth at the King’s house; but, not finding them, nor liking either of the plays,3826 I took my coach again, and home, and there to my office to do business, and by and by they come home, and had been at the King’s House, and saw me, but I could [not] see them, and there I walked with them in the garden awhile, and to sing with Mercer there a little, and so home with her, and taught her a little of my “It is decreed,” which I have a mind to have her learn to sing, and she will do it well, and so after supper she went away, and we to bed, and there made amends by sleep for what I wanted last night.

8th. Up, and it being dirty, I by coach (which I was forced to go to the charge for) to Whitehall, and there did deliver the Duke of York a memorial for the Council about the case of Tangiers want of money; and I was called in there and my paper was read. I did not think fit to say much, but left them to make what use they pleased of my paper; and so went out and waited without all the morning, and at noon hear that there is something ordered towards our help, and so I away by coach home, taking up Mr. Prin at the Court-gate, it raining, and setting him down at the Temple: and by the way did ask him about the manner of holding of Parliaments, and whether the number of Knights and Burgesses were always the same? And he says that the latter were not; but that, for aught he can find, they were sent up at the discretion, at first, of the Sheriffes, to whom the writs are sent, to send up generally the Burgesses and citizens of their county: and he do find that heretofore the Parliament-men being paid by the country, several burroughs have complained of the Sheriffes putting them to the charge of sending up Burgesses; which is a very extraordinary thing to me, that knew not this, but thought that the number had been known, and always the same.3827 Thence home to the office, and so with my Lord Brouncker and his mistress, Williams, to Captain Cocke’s to dinner, where was Temple and Mr. Porter, and a very good dinner, and merry. Thence with Lord Brouncker to Whitehall to the Commissioners of the Treasury at their sending for us to discourse about the paying of tickets, and so away, and I by coach to the ’Change, and there took up my wife and Mercer and the girl by agreement, and so home, and there with Mercer to teach her more of “It is decreed,” and to sing other songs and talk all the evening, and so after supper I to even my journall since Saturday last, and so to bed. Yesterday Mr. Gibson, upon his discovering by my discourse to him that I had a willingness, or rather desire, to have him stay with me, than go, as he designed, on Sir W. Warren’s account, to sea, he resolved to let go the design and wait his fortune with me, though I laboured hard to make him understand the uncertainty of my condition or service, but however he will hazard it, which I take mighty kindly of him, though troubled lest he may come to be a loser by it, but it will not be for want of my telling him what he was to think on and