was well received by my Lord.  I dined with my Lord and Lady, and we had a venison pasty.  Mr. Shepley and I went into London, and calling upon Mr. Pinkney, the goldsmith, he took us to the tavern, and gave us a pint of wine, and there fell into our company old Mr. Flower and another gentleman; who tell us how a Scotch knight was killed basely the other day at the Fleece in Covent Garden, where there had been a great many formerly killed.  So to Paul’s Churchyard, and there I took the little man at Mr. Kirton’s and Mr. Shepley to Ringstead’s at the Star, and after a pint of wine I went home, my brains somewhat troubled with so much wine, and after a letter or two by the post I went to bed.

2d (Lord’s day).  My head not very well, and my body out of order by last night’s drinking, which is my great folly.  To church, and Mr. Mills made a good sermon; so home to dinner.  My wife and I all alone to a leg of mutton, the sawce of which being made sweet, I was angry at it, and eat none, but only dined upon the marrow bone that we had beside.  To church in the afternoon, and after sermon took Tom Fuller’s Church History and read over Henry the 8th’s life in it, and so to supper and to bed.

3rd.  This morning I took a resolution to rise early in the morning, and so I rose by candle, which I have not done all this winter, and spent my morning in fiddling till time to go to the office, where Sir G. Carteret did begin again discourse on Mr. Holland’s proposition, which the King do take very ill, and so Sir George in lieu of that do propose that the seamen should have half in ready money and tickets for the other half, to be paid in three months after, which we judge to be very practicable.  After office home to dinner, where come in my cozen Snow by chance, and I had a very good capon to dinner.  So to the office till night, and so home, and then come Mr. Davis, of Deptford (the first time that ever he was at my house), and after him Mons. L’Impertinent, who is to go to Ireland to-morrow, and so came to take his leave of me.  They both found me under the barber’s hand; but I had a bottle of good sack in the house, and so made them very welcome.  Mr. Davis sat with me a good while after the other was gone, talking of his hard usage and of the endeavour to put him out of his place in the time of the late Commissioners, and he do speak very highly of their corruption.  After he was gone I fell a reading ‘Cornelianum dolium’ till 11 o’clock at night with great pleasure, and after that to bed.

4th.  To Whitehall to Sir G. Carteret’s chamber, where all the officers met, and so we went up to the Duke of York, and he took us into his closet, and we did open to him our project of stopping the growing charge of the fleet by paying them in hand one moyety, and the other four months hence.  This he do like, and we returned by his order to Sir G. Carteret’s chamber, and there we did draw up this design in order to be presented to the Parliament.