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

money of me, £5, and would pawn gold with me for it, which I accepted and promised in a day or two to supply her. So away home to the office, and thence home, where little Mrs. Tooker stayed all night with us, and a pretty child she is, and happens to be niece to my beauty that is dead, that lived at the Jackanapes, in Cheapside. So to bed, a little troubled that I have been at two houses this afternoon with Mrs. Lane that were formerly shut up of the plague.

21st. Up, and with Sir J. Minnes to Whitehall by his coach, by the way talking of my brother John to get a spiritual promotion for him, which I am now to looke after, for as much as he is shortly to be Master in Arts, and writes me this weeke a Latin letter that he is to go into orders this Lent. There to the Duke’s chamber, and find our fellows discoursing there on our business, so I was sorry to come late, but no hurte was done thereby. Here the Duke, among other things, did bring out a book of great antiquity of some of the customs of the Navy, about 100 years since, which he did lend us to read and deliver him back again. Thence I to the Exchequer, and there did strike my tallys for a quarter for Tangier and carried them home with me, and thence to Trinity-house, being invited to an Elder Brother’s feast; and there met and sat by Mr. Prin, and had good discourse about the privileges of Parliament, which, he says, are few to the Commons’ House, and those not examinable by them, but only by the House of Lords. Thence with my Lord Bruncker to Gresham College, the first time after the sicknesse that I was there, and the second time any met. And here a good lecture of Mr. Hooke’s about the trade of felt-making, very pretty. And anon alone with me about the art of drawing pictures by Prince Rupert’s rule and machine, and another of Dr. Wren’s;2787 but he says nothing do like squares, or, which is the best in the world, like a dark roome2788 which pleased me mightily. Thence with Povy home to my house, and there late settling accounts with him, which was very troublesome to me, and he gone, found Mr. Hill below, who sat with me till late talking, and so away, and we to bed.

22nd. Up, and to the office, where sat all the morning. At noon home to dinner and thence by coach with my wife for ayre principally for her. I alone stopped at Hales’s and there mightily am pleased with my wife’s picture that is begun there, and with Mr. Hill’s, though I must [owne] I am not more pleased with it now the face is finished than I was when I saw it the second time of sitting. Thence to my Lord Sandwich’s, but he not within, but goes tomorrow. My wife to Mrs. Hunt’s, who is lately come to towne and grown mighty fat. I called her there, and so home and late at the office, and so home to supper and to bed. We are much troubled that the sicknesse in general (the town being so full of people) should be but three, and yet of the particular disease of the plague there should be ten encrease.

23rd. Up betimes, and out of doors by 6 of the clock, and walked (W. Howe with me) to my Lord Sandwich’s, who did lie the last night at his house in Lincoln’s Inne Fields. It being fine walking in the morning, and the streets full of people again. There I stayed, and the house full of people come to take leave of my Lord, who this day goes out of towne upon his embassy towards Spayne. And I was glad to find Sir W. Coventry to come, though I know it is only a piece of courtshipp. I had much discourse with my Lord, he telling me how fully he leaves the King his friend and the large discourse he had with him the other day, and how he desired to have the business of the prizes examined before he went, and that he yielded to it, and it is done as far as it concerns himself to the full, and the Lords Commissioners for prizes did reprehend all the informers in what related to his Lordship, which I am glad of in many respects. But we could not make an end of discourse, so I promised to waite upon [him] on Sunday at Cranborne, and took leave and away hence to Mr. Hales’s with Mr. Hill and two of the Houblons, who come thither to speak with me, and saw my wife’s picture, which pleases me well, but Mr. Hill’s picture never a whit so well as it did before it was finished, which troubled me, and I begin to doubt the picture of my Lady Peters my wife takes her posture from, and which is an excellent picture, is not of his making, it is so master-like. I set them down at the ’Change and I home to the office, and at noon dined at home and to the office again. Anon comes Mrs. Knipp to see my wife, who is gone out, so I fain to entertain her, and took her out by coach to look my wife at Mrs. Pierce’s and Unthanke’s, but find her not. So back again, and then my wife comes home, having been buying of things, and at home I spent all the night talking with this baggage, and teaching her my song of “Beauty retire,” which she sings and makes go most rarely, and a very fine song it seems to be. She also entertained me with repeating many of her own and others’ parts of the playhouse, which she do