This he did advise with me about with much secresy.  After all this he called for the fiddles and books, and we two and W. Howe, and Mr. Childe, did sing and play some psalmes of Will.  Lawes’s, and some songs; and so I went away.  So I went to see my Lord’s picture, which is almost done, and do please me very well.  Hence to Whitehall to find out Mr. Fox, which I did, and did use me very civilly, but I did not see his lady, whom I had so long known when she was a maid, Mrs. Whittle.  From thence meeting my father Bowyer, I took him to Mr. Harper’s, and there drank with him.  Among other things in discourse he told me how my wife’s brother had a horse at grass with him, which I was troubled to hear, it being his boldness upon my score.  Home by coach, and read late in the last night’s book of Trials, and told my wife about her brother’s horse at Mr. Bowyer’s, who is also much troubled for it, and do intend to go to-morrow to inquire the truth.  Notwithstanding this was the first day of the King’s proclamation against hackney coaches coming into the streets to stand to be hired, yet I got one to carry me home.

["A Proclamation to restrain the abuses of Hackney Coaches in the Cities of London and Westminster and the Suburbs thereof.”  This is printed in “Notes and Queries,” First Series, vol. viii. p. 122.  “In April, 1663, the poor widows of hackney-coachmen petitioned for some relief, as the parliament had reduced the number of coaches to 400; there were before, in and about London, more than 2,000.”  —­Rugge’s Diurnal.]

8th.  This morning Sir Wm. and the Treasurer and I went by barge with Sir Wm. Doyley and Mr. Prin to Deptford, to pay off the Henrietta, and had a good dinner.  I went to Mr. Davys’s and saw his house (where I was once before a great while ago) and I found him a very pretty man.  In the afternoon Commissioner Pett and I went on board the yacht, which indeed is one of the finest things that ever I saw for neatness and room in so small a vessel.  Mr. Pett is to make one to outdo this for the honour of his country, which I fear he will scarce better.  From thence with him as far as Ratcliffe, where I left him going by water to London, and I (unwilling to leave the rest of the officers) went back again to Deptford, and being very much troubled with a sudden looseness, I went into a little alehouse at the end of Ratcliffe, and did give a groat for a pot of ale, and there I did . . .  So went forward in my walk with some men that were going that way a great pace, and in our way we met with many merry seamen that had got their money paid them to-day.  We sat very late doing the work and waiting for the tide, it being moonshine we got to London before two in the morning.  So home, where I found my wife up, she shewed me her head which was very well dressed to-day, she having been to see her father and mother.  So to bed.