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

all the money due for their wages before they receive it, and that at a dear rate, God knows, so that many of them had very little to receive at the table, which grieved me to see it. To dinner, very merry. Then Sir George to London, and we again to the pay, and that done by coach home again and to the office, doing some business, and so home and to bed.

28th (Good Friday). At home all the morning, and dined with my wife, a good dinner. At my office all the afternoon. At night to my chamber to read and sing, and so to supper and to bed.

29th. At the office all the morning. Then to the Wardrobe, and there coming late dined with the people below. Then up to my Lady, and stayed two hours talking with her about her family business with great content and confidence in me. So calling at several places I went home, where my people are getting the house clean against tomorrow. I to the office and wrote several letters by post, and so home and to bed.

30th (Easter day). Having my old black suit new furbished, I was pretty neat in clothes today, and my boy, his old suit new trimmed, very handsome. To church in the morning, and so home, leaving the two Sir Williams to take the Sacrament, which I blame myself that I have hitherto neglected all my life, but once or twice at Cambridge.1371 Dined with my wife, a good shoulder of veal well dressed by Jane, and handsomely served to table, which pleased us much, and made us hope that she will serve our turn well enough. My wife and I to church in the afternoon, and seated ourselves, she below me, and by that means the precedence of the pew, which my Lady Batten and her daughter takes, is confounded; and after sermon she and I did stay behind them in the pew, and went out by ourselves a good while after them, which we judge a very fine project hereafter to avoyd contention. So my wife and I to walk an hour or two on the leads, which begins to be very pleasant, the garden being in good condition. So to supper, which is also well served in. We had a lobster to supper, with a crabb Pegg Penn sent my wife this afternoon, the reason of which we cannot think; but something there is of plot or design in it, for we have a little while carried ourselves pretty strange to them. After supper to bed.

31st. This morning Mr. Coventry and all our company met at the office about some business of the victualling, which being dispatched we parted. I to my Lord Crew’s to dinner (in my way calling upon my brother Tom, with whom I stayed a good while and talked, and find him a man like to do well, which contents me much), where used with much respect, and talking with him about my Lord’s debts, and whether we should make use of an offer of Sir G. Carteret’s to lend my Lady 4 or £500, he told me by no means, we must not oblige my Lord to him, and by the by he made a question whether it was not my Lord’s interest a little to appear to the King in debt, and for people to clamor against him as well as others for their money, that by that means the King and the world may see that he do lay out for the King’s honour upon his own main stock, which many he tells me do, that in fine if there be occasion he and I will be bound for it. Thence to Sir Thomas Crew’s lodgings. He hath been ill, and continues so, under fits of apoplexy. Among other things, he and I did discourse much of Mr. Montagu’s base doings, and the dishonour that he will do my Lord, as well as cheating him of 2 or £3,000, which is too true. Thence to the play, where coming late, and meeting with Sir W. Penn, who had got room for my wife and his daughter in the pit, he and I into one of the boxes, and there we sat and heard The Little Thiefe,1372 a pretty play and well done. Thence home, and walked in the garden with them, and then to the house to supper and sat late talking, and so to bed.

April 1662

April 1st. Within all the morning and at the office. At noon my wife and I (having paid our maid Nell her whole wages, who has been with me half a year, and now goes away for altogether) to the Wardrobe, where my Lady and company had almost dined. We sat down and dined. Here was Mr. Herbert, son to Sir Charles Herbert, that lately came with letters from my Lord Sandwich to the King. After some discourse we remembered one another to have been together at the tavern when Mr. Fanshaw took his leave of me at his going to Portugall with Sir Richard. After dinner he and I and the two young ladies and my wife to the playhouse, the Opera, and saw The Maid in the Mill, a pretty good play. In the middle of the play my Lady Paulina, who had taken physique this morning, had need to go forth, and so I took the poor lady out and carried her to the Grange, and there sent the maid of the house into a room to her, and she did what she had a mind to, and so back again to the play; and that being done, in their coach I took them to Islington, and then, after a walk in the fields, I took them to the great