By and by the Duke comes, and we with him about our usual business, and then the Committee for Tangier, where, after reading my Lord Rutherford’s commission and consented to, Sir R. Ford, Sir W. Rider, and I were chosen to bring in some laws for the Civill government of it, which I am little able to do, but am glad to be joyned with them, for I shall learn something of them.  Thence to see my Lord Sandwich, and who should I meet at the door but Major Holmes.  He would have gone away, but I told him I would not spoil his visitt, and would have gone, but however we fell to discourse and he did as good as desire excuse for the high words that did pass in his heat the other day, which I was willing enough to close with, and after telling him my mind we parted, and I left him to speak with my Lord, and I by coach home, where I found Will.  Howe come home to-day with my wife, and staid with us all night, staying late up singing songs, and then he and I to bed together in Ashwell’s bed and she with my wife.  This the first time that I ever lay in the room.  This day Greatorex brought me a very pretty weather-glass for heat and cold.

[The thermometer was invented in the sixteenth century, but it is disputed who the inventor was.  The claims of Santorio are supported by Borelli and Malpighi, while the title of Cornelius Drebbel is considered undoubted by Boerhaave.  Galileo’s air thermometer, made before 1597, was the foundation of accurate thermometry.  Galileo also invented the alcohol thermometer about 1611 or 1612.  Spirit thermometers were made for the Accademia del Cimento, and described in the Memoirs of that academy.  When the academy was dissolved by order of the Pope, some of these thermometers were packed away in a box, and were not discovered until early in the nineteenth century.  Robert Hooke describes the manufacture and graduation of thermometers in his “Micrographia” (1665).]

24th.  Lay pretty long, that is, till past six o’clock, and them up and W. Howe and I very merry together, till having eat our breakfast, he went away, and I to my office.  By and by Sir J. Minnes and I to the Victualling Office by appointment to meet several persons upon stating the demands of some people of money from the King.  Here we went into their Bakehouse, and saw all the ovens at work, and good bread too, as ever I would desire to eat.  Thence Sir J. Minnes and I homewards calling at Browne’s, the mathematician in the Minnerys, with a design of buying White’s ruler to measure timber with, but could not agree on the price.  So home, and to dinner, and so to my office, where we sat anon, and among other things had Cooper’s business tried against Captain Holmes, but I find Cooper a fuddling, troublesome fellow, though a good artist, and so am contented to have him turned out of his place, nor did I see reason to say one word against it, though I know what they did against him was with great envy and pride.  So anon broke up, and after writing letters, &c., home to supper and to bed.