you would quickly pass such laws as are before you, in order to the amending those ways, and that she may not find Whitehall surrounded with water.”  Such a bill passed the Commons on the 24th June.  From Charles’s Speech, March 1st, 1662.—­B.]

But he, I hear since, was forced to stay till almost nine o’clock at night before he could have done, and then he prorogued them; and so to Gilford, and lay there.  Home, and Mr. Hunt dined with me, and were merry.  After dinner Sir W. Pen and his daughter, and I and my wife by coach to the Theatre, and there in a box saw “The Little Thief” well done.  Thence to Moorefields, and walked and eat some cheesecake and gammon of bacon, but when I was come home I was sick, forced to vomit it up again.  So my wife walking and singing upon the leads till very late, it being pleasant and moonshine, and so to bed.

10th.  Sir W. Pen and I did a little business at the office, and so home again.  Then comes Dean Fuller after we had dined, but I got something for him, and very merry we were for an hour or two, and I am most pleased with his company and goodness.  At last parted, and my wife and I by coach to the Opera, and there saw the 2nd part of “The Siege of Rhodes,” but it is not so well done as when Roxalana was there, who, it is said, is now owned by my Lord of Oxford.

[For note on Mrs. Davenport, who was deceived by a pretended marriage with the Earl of Oxford, see ante.  Lord Oxford’s first wife died in 1659.  He married, in 1672, his second wife, Diana Kirke, of whom nothing more need be said than that she bore an inappropriate Christian name.]

Thence to Tower-wharf, and there took boat, and we all walked to Halfeway House, and there eat and drank, and were pleasant, and so finally home again in the evening, end so good night, this being a very pleasant life that we now lead, and have long done; the Lord be blessed, and make us thankful.  But, though I am much against too much spending, yet I do think it best to enjoy some degree of pleasure now that we have health, money, and opportunity, rather than to leave pleasures to old age or poverty, when we cannot have them so properly.

21st.  My wife and I by water to Westminster, and after she had seen her father (of whom lately I have heard nothing at all what he does or her mother), she comes to me to my Lord’s lodgings, where she and I staid walking in White Hall garden.  And in the Privy-garden saw the finest smocks and linnen petticoats of my Lady Castlemaine’s, laced with rich lace at the bottom, that ever I saw; and did me good to look upon them.  So to Wilkinson’s, she and I and Sarah to dinner, where I had a good quarter of lamb and a salat.  Here Sarah told me how the King dined at my Lady Castlemaine’s, and supped, every day and night the last week; and that the night that the bonfires were made for joy of the Queen’s arrivall, the King was there; but there was no fire