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

12th. Up, and to Westminster Hall, where the term is, and this the first day of my being there, and here by chance met Roger Pepys, come to town the last night: I was glad to see him. After some talk with him and others, and among others Sir Charles Harbord and Sidney Montagu, the latter of whom is to set out tomorrow towards Flanders and Italy, I invited them to dine with me tomorrow, and so to Mrs. Martin’s lodging, who come to town last night, and there je did hazer her, she having been a month, I think, at Portsmouth with her husband, newly come home from the Streights. But, Lord! how silly the woman talks of her great entertainment there, and how all the gentry come to visit her, and that she believes her husband is worth £6 or £700, which nevertheless I am glad of, but I doubt they will spend it a fast. Thence home, and after dinner my wife and I to the Duke of York’s playhouse, and there, in the side balcony, over against the music, did hear, but not see, a new play, the first day acted, The Roman Virgin,4525 an old play, and but ordinary, I thought; but the trouble of my eyes with the light of the candles did almost kill me. Thence to my Lord Sandwich’s, and there had a promise from Sidney to come and dine with me tomorrow; and so my wife and I home in our coach, and there find my brother John, as I looked for, come to town from Ellington,4526 where, among other things, he tell me the first news that my [sister Jackson] is with child, and fat gone, which I know not whether it did more trouble or please me, having no great care for my friends to have children; though I love other people’s. So, glad to see him, we to supper, and so to bed.

13th. Up, and to the office, where all the morning, it being a rainy foul day. But at noon comes my Lord Hinchingbroke, and Sidney, and Sir Charles Harbord, and Roger Pepys, and dined with me; and had a good dinner, and very merry with us all the afternoon, it being a farewell to Sidney; and so in the evening they away, and I to my business at the Office and so to supper, and talk with my brother, and so to bed.

14th. Up, and to St. James’s to the Duke of York, and thence to Whitehall, where we met about office business, and then at noon with Mr. Wren to Lambeth, to dinner with the Archbishop of Canterbury; the first time I was ever there and I have long longed for it; where a noble house, and well furnished with good pictures and furniture, and noble attendance in good order, and great deal of company, though an ordinary day; and exceeding great cheer, nowhere better, or so much, that ever I think I saw, for an ordinary table: and the Bishop mighty kind to me, particularly desiring my company another time, when less company there. Most of the company gone, and I going, I heard by a gentleman of a sermon that was to be there; and so I stayed to hear it, thinking it serious, till by and by the gentleman told me it was a mockery, by one Cornet Bolton, a very gentleman-like man, that behind a chair did pray and preach like a Presbyter Scot that ever I heard in my life, with all the possible imitation in grimaces and voice. And his text about the hanging up their harps upon the willows:4527 and a serious good sermon too, exclaiming against Bishops, and crying up of my good Lord Eglinton,4528 till it made us all burst; but I did wonder to have the Bishop at this time to make himself sport with things of this kind, but I perceive it was shown him as a rarity; and he took care to have the room-door shut, but there were about twenty gentlemen there, and myself, infinitely pleased with the novelty. So over to Whitehall, to a little Committee of Tangier; and thence walking in the Gallery, I met Sir Thomas Osborne, who, to my great content, did of his own accord fall into discourse with me, with so much professions of value and respect, placing the whole virtue of the Office of the Navy upon me, and that for the Comptroller’s place, no man in England was fit for it but me, when Sir J. Minnes, as he says it is necessary, is removed: but then he knows not what to do for a man in my place; and in discourse, though I have no mind to the other, I did bring in Tom Hater to be the fittest man in the world for it, which he took good notice of. But in the whole I was mightily pleased, reckoning myself now fifty percent securer in my place than I did before think myself to be. Thence to Unthanke’s, and there find my wife, but not dressed, which vexed me, because going to the Park, it being a most pleasant day after yesterday’s rain, which lays all the dust, and most people going out thither, which vexed me. So home, sullen; but then my wife and I by water, with my brother, as high as Fulham, talking and singing, and playing the rogue with the Western bargemen,4529 about the women of Woolwich,4530 which mads them, and so back home to supper and to bed.

15th. Up, and at the Office all the morning. Dined at home and Creed with me home, and I did discourse about evening