so abroad by coach with my wife, and bought a looking glasse by the Old Exchange, which costs me L5 5s. and 6s. for the hooks.  A very fair glasse.  So toward my cozen Scott’s, but meeting my Lady Sandwich’s coach, my wife turned back to follow them, thinking they might, as they did, go to visit her, and I ’light and to Mrs. Harman, and there staid and talked in her shop with her, and much pleased I am with her.  We talked about Anthony Joyce’s giving over trade and that he intends to live in lodgings, which is a very mad, foolish thing.  She tells me she hears and believes it is because he, being now begun to be called on offices, resolves not to take the new oathe, he having formerly taken the Covenant or Engagement, but I think he do very simply and will endeavour for his wife’s sake to advise him therein.  Thence to my cozen Scott’s, and there met my cozen Roger Pepys, and Mrs. Turner, and The. and Joyce, and prated all the while, and so with the “corps” to church and heard a very fine sermon of the Parson of the parish, and so homeward with them in their coach, but finding it too late to go home with me, I took another coach and so home, and after a while at my office, home to supper and to bed.

17th.  Up and to the office, where we sat all the morning.  At noon I to the ’Change, and there, among others, had my first meeting with Mr. L’Estrange, who hath endeavoured several times to speak with me.  It is to get, now and then, some newes of me, which I shall, as I see cause, give him.  He is a man of fine conversation, I think, but I am sure most courtly and full of compliments.  Thence home to dinner, and then come the looking-glass man to set up the looking-glass I bought yesterday, in my dining-room, and very handsome it is.  So abroad by coach to White Hall, and there to the Committee of Tangier, and then the Fishing.  Mr. Povy did in discourse give me a rub about my late bill for money that I did get of him, which vexed me and stuck in my mind all this evening, though I know very well how to cleare myself at the worst.  So home and to my office, where late, and then home to bed.  Mighty talke there is of this Comet that is seen a’nights; and the King and Queene did sit up last night to see it, and did, it seems.  And to-night I thought to have done so too; but it is cloudy, and so no stars appear.  But I will endeavour it.  Mr. Gray did tell me to-night, for certain, that the Dutch, as high as they seem, do begin to buckle; and that one man in this Kingdom did tell the King that he is offered L40,000 to make a peace, and others have been offered money also.  It seems the taking of their Bourdeaux fleete thus, arose from a printed Gazette of the Dutch’s boasting of fighting, and having beaten the English:  in confidence whereof (it coming to Bourdeaux), all the fleete comes out, and so falls into our hands.