26th.  My Lord dined at his lodgings all alone to-day.  I went to Secretary Nicholas

     [Sir Edward Nicholas, Secretary of State to Charles I. and ii. 
     He was dismissed from his office through the intrigues of Lady
     Castlemaine in 1663.  He died 1669, aged seventy-seven.]

to carry him my Lord’s resolutions about his title, which he had chosen, and that is Portsmouth.

     [Montagu changed his mind, and ultimately took his title from the
     town of Sandwich, leaving that of Portsmouth for the use of a King’s
     mistress.]

I met with Mr. Throgmorton, a merchant, who went with me to the old Three Tuns, at Charing Cross, who did give me five pieces of gold for to do him a small piece of service about a convoy to Bilbo, which I did.  In the afternoon, one Mr. Watts came to me, a merchant, to offer me L500 if I would desist from the Clerk of the Acts place.  I pray God direct me in what I do herein.  Went to my house, where I found my father, and carried him and my wife to Whitefriars, and myself to Puddlewharf, to the Wardrobe, to Mr. Townsend, who went with me to Backwell, the goldsmith’s, and there we chose L100 worth of plate for my Lord to give Secretary Nicholas.  Back and staid at my father’s, and so home to bed.

27th.  With my Lord to the Duke, where he spoke to Mr. Coventry to despatch my business of the Acts, in which place every body gives me joy, as if I were in it, which God send.

[The letters patent, dated July 13th, 12 Charles ii., recite and revoke letters patent of February 16th, 14 Charles I., whereby the office of Clerk of the Ships had been given to Dennis Fleming and Thomas Barlow, or the survivor.  D. F. was then dead, but T. B. living, and Samuel Pepys was appointed in his room, at a salary of L33 6s. 8d. per annum, with 3s. 4d. for each day employed in travelling, and L6 per annum for boathire, and all fees due.  This salary was only the ancient “fee out of the Exchequer,” which had been attached to the office for more than a century.  Pepys’s salary had been previously fixed at L350 a year.]

Dined with my Lord and all the officers of his regiment, who invited my Lord and his friends, as many as he would bring, to dinner, at the Swan, at Dowgate, a poor house and ill dressed, but very good fish and plenty.  Here Mr. Symons, the Surgeon, told me how he was likely to lose his estate that he had bought, at which I was not a little pleased.  To Westminster, and with Mr. Howe by coach to the Speaker’s, where my Lord supped with the King, but I could not get in.  So back again, and after a song or two in my chamber in the dark, which do (now that the bed is out) sound very well, I went home and to bed.