[Mrs. Pepys’s father was Alexander Marchant, Sieur de St. Michel, a scion of a good family in Anjou.  Having turned Huguenot at the age of twenty-one, his father disinherited him, and he was left penniless.  He came over in the retinue of Henrietta Maria, on her marriage with Charles I., as one of her Majesty’s gentlemen carvers, but the Queen dismissed him on finding out he was a Protestant and did not go to mass.  He described himself as being captain and major of English troops in Italy and Flanders.—­Wheatley’s Pepys and the World he lived in, pp. 6, 250.  He was full of schemes; see September 22nd, 1663, for account of his patent for curing smoky chimneys.]

and I to walk in the Park, which is now every day more and more pleasant, by the new works upon it.  Here meeting with Laud Crispe, I took him to the farther end, and sat under a tree in a corner, and there sung some songs, he singing well, but no skill, and so would sing false sometimes.  Then took leave of him, and found my wife at my Lord’s lodging, and so took her home by water, and to supper in Sir W. Pen’s balcony, and Mrs. Keene with us, and then came my wife’s brother, and then broke up, and to bed.

28th.  Up early, and by six o’clock, after my wife was ready, I walked with her to the George, at Holborn Conduit, where the coach stood ready to carry her and her maid to Bugden, but that not being ready, my brother Tom staid with them to see them gone, and so I took a troubled though willing goodbye, because of the bad condition of my house to have a family in it.  So I took leave of her and walked to the waterside, and there took boat for the Tower; hearing that the Queen-Mother is come this morning already as high as Woolwich:  and that my Lord Sandwich was with her; at which my heart was glad, and I sent the waterman, though yet not very certain of it, to my wife to carry news thereof to my Lady.  So to my office all the morning abstracting the Duke’s instructions in the margin thereof.  So home all alone to dinner, and then to the office again, and in the evening Cooper comes, and he being gone, to my chamber a little troubled and melancholy, to my lute late, and so to bed, Will lying there at my feet, and the wench in my house in Will’s bed.

29th.  Early up, and brought all my money, which is near L300, out of my house into this chamber; and so to the office, and there we sat all the morning, Sir George Carteret and Mr. Coventry being come from sea.  This morning among other things I broached the business of our being abused about flags, which I know doth trouble Sir W. Batten, but I care not.  At noon being invited I went with Sir George and Mr. Coventry to Sir W. Batten’s to dinner, and there merry, and very friendly to Sir Wm. and he to me, and complies much with me, but I know he envies me, and I do not value him.  To the office again, and in the evening walked to Deptford (Cooper with me talking of mathematiques), to send a fellow to prison for cutting of buoy ropes, and to see the difference between the flags sent in now-a-days, and I find the old ones, which were much cheaper, to be wholly as good.  So I took one of a sort with me, and Mr. Wayth accompanying of me a good way, talking of the faults of the Navy, I walked to Redriffe back, and so home by water, and after having done, late, at the office, I went to my chamber and to bed.