to do, and therefore left them and home to dinner.  After dinner, it raining very hard, by coach to Whitehall, where, after Sir G. Carteret, Sir J. Minnes, Mr. Coventry and I had been with the Duke, we to the Committee of Tangier and did matters there dispatching wholly my Lord Teviott, and so broke up.  With Sir G. Carteret and Sir John Minnes by coach to my Lord Treasurer’s, thinking to have spoken about getting money for paying the Yards; but we found him with some ladies at cards:  and so, it being a bad time to speak, we parted, and Sir J. Minnes and I home, and after walking with my wife in the garden late, to supper and to bed, being somewhat troubled at Ashwell’s desiring and insisting over eagerly upon her going to a ball to meet some of her old companions at a dancing school here in town next Friday, but I am resolved she shall not go.  So to bed.  This day the little Duke of Monmouth was marryed at White Hall, in the King’s chamber; and tonight is a great supper and dancing at his lodgings, near Charing-Cross.  I observed his coat at the tail of his coach he gives the arms of England, Scotland, and France, quartered upon some other fields, but what it is that speaks his being a bastard I know not.

21st.  Up betimes and to my office, where first I ruled with red ink my English “Mare Clausum,” which, with the new orthodox title, makes it now very handsome.  So to business, and then home to dinner, and after dinner to sit at the office in the afternoon, and thence to my study late, and so home to supper to play a game at cards with my wife, and so to bed.  Ashwell plays well at cards, and will teach us to play; I wish it do not lose too much of my time, and put my wife too much upon it.

22nd.  Up betimes and to my office very busy all the morning there, entering things into my Book Manuscript, which pleases me very much.  So to the Change, and so to my uncle Wight’s, by invitation, whither my father, wife, and Ashwell came, where we had but a poor dinner, and not well dressed; besides, the very sight of my aunt’s hands and greasy manner of carving, did almost turn my stomach.  After dinner by coach to the King’s Playhouse, where we saw but part of “Witt without mony,” which I do not like much, but coming late put me out of tune, and it costing me four half-crowns for myself and company.  So, the play done, home, and I to my office a while and so home, where my father (who is so very melancholy) and we played at cards, and so to supper and to bed.

23rd.  St. George’s day and Coronacion, the King and Court being at Windsor, at the installing of the King of Denmark by proxy and the Duke of Monmouth.  I up betimes, and with my father, having a fire made in my wife’s new closet above, it being a wet and cold day, we sat there all the morning looking over his country accounts ever since his going into the country.  I find his spending hitherto has been (without extraordinary charges) at full L100