in; but at last, after seeing Chaucer, Dugdale’s History of Paul’s, Stows London, Gesner, History of Trent, besides Shakespeare, Jonson, and Beaumont’s plays, I at last chose Dr. Fuller’s Worthys, the Cabbala or Collections of Letters of State, and a little book, Delices de Hollande, with another little book or two, all of good use or serious pleasure:  and Hudibras, both parts, the book now in greatest fashion for drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies.  My mind being thus settled, I went by linke home, and so to my office, and to read in Rushworth; and so home to supper and to bed.  Calling at Wotton’s, my shoemaker’s, today, he tells me that Sir H. Wright is dying; and that Harris is come to the Duke’s house again; and of a rare play to be acted this week of Sir William Davenant’s:  the story of Henry the Eighth with all his wives.

11th.  Up and abroad toward the Wardrobe, and going out Mr. Clerke met me to tell me that Field has a writ against me in this last business of L30 10s., and that he believes he will get an execution against me this morning, and though he told me it could not be well before noon, and that he would stop it at the Sheriff’s, yet it is hard to believe with what fear I did walk and how I did doubt at every man I saw and do start at the hearing of one man cough behind my neck.  I to, the Wardrobe and there missed Mr. Moore.  So to Mr. Holden’s and evened all reckonings there for hats, and then walked to Paul’s Churchyard and after a little at my bookseller’s and bought at a shop Cardinall Mazarin’s Will in French.  I to the Coffeehouse and there among others had good discourse with an Iron Merchant, who tells me the great evil of discouraging our natural manufacture of England in that commodity by suffering the Swede to bring in three times more than ever they did and our owne Ironworks be lost, as almost half of them, he says, are already.  Then I went and sat by Mr. Harrington, and some East country merchants, and talking of the country about Quinsborough, and thereabouts, he told us himself that for fish, none there, the poorest body, will buy a dead fish, but must be alive, unless it be in winter; and then they told us the manner of putting their nets into the water.  Through holes made in the thick ice, they will spread a net of half a mile long; and he hath known a hundred and thirty and a hundred and seventy barrels of fish taken at one draught.  And then the people come with sledges upon the ice, with snow at the bottome, and lay the fish in and cover them with snow, and so carry them to market.  And he hath seen when the said fish have been frozen in the sledge, so as that he hath taken a fish and broke a-pieces, so hard it hath been; and yet the same fishes taken out of the snow, and brought into a hot room, will be alive and leap up and down.  Swallows are often brought up in their nets out of the mudd from under water, hanging together to some twigg or other, dead in ropes, and brought to the fire will