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

where busy late, then home to supper and to bed. This morning was told by Sir W. Batten, that he do hear from Mr. Grey, who hath good intelligence, that our Queen is to go into a nunnery, there to spend her days; and that my Lady Castlemayne is going into France, and is to have a pension of £4,000 a-year. This latter I do more believe than the other, it being very wise in her to do it, and save all she hath, besides easing the King and kingdom of a burden and reproach.

6th. Up, and to Westminster to the Exchequer, and then into the Hall, and there bought Guillim’s Heraldry3624 for my wife, and so to the Swan, and thither come Doll Lane, and je did toucher her, and drank, and so away, I took coach and home, where I find my wife gone to Walthamstow by invitation with Sir W. Batten, and so I followed, taking up Mrs. Turner, and she and I much discourse all the way touching the baseness of Sir W. Penn and sluttishness of his family, and how the world do suspect that his son Lowther, who is sick of a sore mouth, has got the pox. So we come to Sir W. Batten’s, where Sir W. Penn and his Lady, and we and Mrs. Shipman, and here we walked and had an indifferent good dinner, the victuals very good and cleanly dressed and good linen, but no fine meat at all. After dinner we went up and down the house, and I do like it very well, being furnished with a great deal of very good goods. And here we stayed, I tired with the company, till almost evening, and then took leave, Turner and I together again, and my wife with [Sir] W. Penn. At Aldgate I took my wife into our coach, and so to Bartholomew fair, and there, it being very dirty, and now night, we saw a poor fellow, whose legs were tied behind his back, dance upon his hands with his arse above his head, and also dance upon his crutches, without any legs upon the ground to help him, which he did with that pain that I was sorry to see it, and did pity him and give him money after he had done. Then we to see a piece of clockwork made by an Englishman⁠—indeed, very good, wherein all the several states of man’s age, to 100 years old, is shown very pretty and solemne; and several other things more cheerful, and so we ended, and took a link, the women resolving to be dirty, and walked up and down to get a coach; and my wife, being a little before me, had been like to be taken up by one, whom we saw to be Sam Hartlib. My wife had her vizard on: yet we cannot say that he meant any hurt; for it was as she was just by a coach-side, which he had, or had a mind to take up; and he asked her, “Madam, do you go in this coach?” but, soon as he saw a man come to her (I know not whether he knew me) he departed away apace. By and by did get a coach, and so away home, and there to supper, and to bed.

7th. Up, and to the office, where all the morning. At noon home to dinner, where Goodgroome was teaching my wife, and dined with us, and I did tell him of my intention to learn to trill, which he will not promise I shall obtain, but he will do what can be done, and I am resolved to learn. All the afternoon at the office, and towards night out by coach with my wife, she to the ’Change, and I to see the price of a copper cisterne for the table, which is very pretty, and they demand £6 or £7 for one; but I will have one. Then called my wife at the ’Change, and bought a nightgown for my wife: cost but 24s., and so out to Mile End to drink, and so home to the office to end my letters, and so home to supper and to bed.

8th (Lord’s day). Up, and walked to St. James’s; but there I find Sir W. Coventry gone from his chamber, and Mr. Wren not yet come thither. But I up to the Duke of York, and there, after being ready, my Lord Bruncker and I had an audience, and thence with my Lord Bruncker to Whitehall, and he told me, in discourse, how that, though it is true that Sir W. Coventry did long since propose to the Duke of York the leaving his service, as being unable to fulfill it, as he should do, now he hath so much public business, and that the Duke of York did bid him to say nothing of it, but that he would take time to please himself in another to come in his place; yet the Duke’s doing it at this time, declaring that he hath found out another, and this one of the Chancellor’s servants, he cannot but think was done with some displeasure, and that it could not well be otherwise, that the Duke of York should keep one in that place, that had so eminently opposed him in the defence of his father-in-law, nor could the Duchesse ever endure the sight of him, to be sure. But he thinks that the Duke of York and he are parted upon clear terms of friendship. He tells me he do believe that my Lady Castlemayne is compounding with the King for a pension, and to leave the Court; but that her demands are mighty high: but he believes the King is resolved, and so do everybody else I speak with, to do all possible