[Lion Key, Lower Thames Street, where the famous Duchess of Suffolk in the time of Bishop Gardiner’s persecution took boat for the continent.  James, Duke of York, also left the country from this same place on the night of April 20th, 1648, when he escaped from St. James’s Palace.]

the tide against us, and so landed and walked to the Bridge, and there took a coach by chance passing by, and so I saw them home, and there eat some cold venison with them, and drunk and bade them good night, having been mighty merry with them, and I think it is not amiss to preserve, though it cost me a little, such a friend as Mrs. Turner.  So home and to bed, my head running upon what to do to-morrow to fit things against my wife’s coming, as to buy a bedstead, because my brother John is here, and I have now no more beds than are used.

12th.  A little to my office, to put down my yesterday’s journall, and so abroad to buy a bedstead and do other things.  So home again, and having put up the bedstead and done other things in order to my wife’s coming, I went out to several places and to Mrs. Turner’s, she inviting me last night, and there dined; with her and Madam Morrice and a stranger we were very merry and had a fine dinner, and thence I took leave and to White Hall, where my Lords Sandwich, Peterborough, and others made a Tangier Committee; spent the afternoon in reading and ordering with a great deal of alteration, and yet methinks never a whit the better, of a letter drawn by Creed to my Lord Rutherford.  The Lords being against anything that looked to be rough, though it was in matter of money and accounts, wherein their courtship may cost the King dear.  Only I do see by them, that speaking in matters distasteful to him that we write to, it is best to do it in the plainest way and without ambages or reasoning, but only say matters of fact, and leave the party to collect your meaning.  Thence by water to my brother’s, and there I hear my wife is come and gone home, and my father is come to town also, at which I wondered.  But I discern it is to give my brother advice about his business, and it may be to pacify me about the differences that have been between my wife and him and my mother at her late being with them.  Though by and by he coming to Mr. Holden’s (where I was buying a hat) he took no notice to me of anything.  I talked to him a little while and left him to lie at the end of the town, and I home, where methought I found my wife strange, not knowing, I believe, in what temper she could expect me to be in, but I fell to kind words, and so we were very kind, only she could not forbear telling me how she had been used by them and her mayde, Ashwell, in the country, but I find it will be best not to examine it, for I doubt she’s in fault too, and therefore I seek to put it off from my hearing, and so to bed and there entertained her with great content, and so to sleep.