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

home, and to my writing of my letters, and so home to supper and to bed for fearing my eyes. Our greatest business at the office today is our want of money for the setting forth of these ships that are to go out, and my people at dinner tell me that they do verily doubt that the want of men will be so great, as we must press; and if we press, there will be mutinies in the town; for the seamen are said already to have threatened the pulling down of the Treasury Office; and if they do once come to that, it will not be long before they come to ours.

29th (Lord’s day). Up, and I to Church, where I have not been these many weeks before, and there did first find a strange Reader, who could not find in the Service-book the place for churching women, but was fain to change books with the clerke: and then a stranger preached, a seeming able man; but said in his pulpit that God did a greater work in raising of an oake-tree from an akehorne, than a man’s body raising it, at the last day, from his dust (showing the possibility of the Resurrection): which was, methought, a strange saying. At home to dinner, whither comes and dines with me W. Howe, and by invitation Mr. Harris and Mr. Banister, most extraordinary company both, the latter for musique of all sorts, the former for everything: here we sang, and Banister played on the theorbo, and afterwards Banister played on his flageolet, and I had very good discourse with him about musique, so confirming some of my new notions about musique that it puts me upon a resolution to go on and make a scheme and theory of musique not yet ever made in the world. Harris do so commend my wife’s picture of Mr. Hales’s, that I shall have him draw Harris’s head; and he hath also persuaded me to have Cooper draw my wife’s, which, though it cost £30, yet I will have done. Thus spent the afternoon most deliciously, and then broke up and walked with them as far as the Temple, and there parted, and I took coach to Westminster, but there did nothing, meeting nobody that I had a mind to speak with, and so home, and there find Mr. Pelling, and then also comes Mrs. Turner, and supped and talked with us, and so to bed. I do hear by several that Sir W. Penn’s going to sea do dislike the Parliament mightily, and that they have revived the Committee of Miscarriages to find something to prevent it; and that he being the other day with the Duke of Albemarle to ask his opinion touching his going to sea, the Duchess overheard and come in to him, and asks W. Penn how he durst have the confidence to offer to go to sea again, to the endangering the nation, when he knew himself such a coward as he was, which, if true, is very severe.

30th. Up betimes, and so to the office, there to do business till about 10 o’clock, and then out with my wife and Deb. and W. Hewer by coach to Common-garden Coffeehouse, where by appointment I was to meet Harris; which I did, and also Mr. Cooper, the great painter, and Mr. Hales: and thence presently to Mr. Cooper’s house,3961 to see some of his work, which is all in little, but so excellent as, though I must confess I do think the colouring of the flesh to be a little forced, yet the painting is so extraordinary, as I do never expect to see the like again. Here I did see Mrs. Stewart’s3962 picture as when a young maid, and now just done before her having the smallpox: and it would make a man weep to see what she was then, and what she is like to be, by people’s discourse, now. Here I saw my Lord General’s picture, and my Lord Arlington and Ashly’s, and several others; but among the rest one Swinfen, that was Secretary to my Lord Manchester, Lord Chamberlain, with Cooling, done so admirably as I never saw anything: but the misery was, this fellow died in debt, and never paid Cooper for his picture; but, it being seized on by his creditors, among his other goods, after his death, Cooper himself says that he did buy it, and give £25 out of his purse for it, for what he was to have had but £30. Being infinitely satisfied with this sight, and resolving that my wife shall be drawn by him when she comes out of the country, I away with Harris and Hales to the Coffeehouse, sending my people away, and there resolve for Hales to begin Harris’s head for me, which I will be at the cost of. After a little talk, I away to Whitehall and Westminster, where I find the Parliament still bogling about the raising of this money: and everybody’s mouth full now; and Mr. Wren himself tells me that the Duke of York declares to go to sea himself this year; and I perceive it is only on this occasion of distaste of the Parliament against W. Penn’s going, and to prevent the Prince’s: but I think it is mighty hot counsel for the Duke of York at this time to go out of the way; but, Lord! what a pass are all our matters come to! At noon by appointment to Cursitor’s Alley, in Chancery Lane, to meet Captain Cocke and some other creditors of the Navy, and their Counsel, Pemberton, North,3963 Offly, and Charles Porter; and there dined, and talked of the business of the assignments on the Exchequer of the £1,250,000 on behalf of our creditors; and there I do perceive that the Counsel had heard of my performance in the Parliamenthouse lately,