wonders I ever did see.  After dinner, about 4 of the clock we broke up, and I took coach and home (in fear for the money I had with me, but that this friend of Spicer’s, one of the Duke’s guard did ride along the best part of the way with us).  I got to my Lord Bruncker’s before night, and there I sat and supped with him and his mistresse, and Cocke whose boy is yet ill.  Thence, after losing a crowne betting at Tables—­[Cribbage]—­, we walked home, Cocke seeing me at my new lodging, where I went to bed.  All my worke this day in the coach going and coming was to refresh myself in my musique scale, which I would fain have perfecter than ever I had yet.

22nd.  Up betimes and to the office, meaning to have entered my last 5 or 6 days’ Journall, but was called away by my Lord Bruncker and Sir J. Minnes, and to Blackwall, there to look after the storehouses in order to the laying of goods out of the East India ships when they shall be unloaden.  That being done, we into Johnson’s house, and were much made of, eating and drinking.  But here it is observable what he tells us, that in digging his late Docke, he did 12 foot under ground find perfect trees over-covered with earth.  Nut trees, with the branches and the very nuts upon them; some of whose nuts he showed us.  Their shells black with age, and their kernell, upon opening, decayed, but their shell perfectly hard as ever.  And a yew tree he showed us (upon which, he says, the very ivy was taken up whole about it), which upon cutting with an addes [adze], we found to be rather harder than the living tree usually is.  They say, very much, but I do not know how hard a yew tree naturally is.

     [The same discovery was made in 1789, in digging the Brunswick Dock,
     also at Blackwall, and elsewhere in the neighbourhood.]

The armes, they say, were taken up at first whole, about the body, which is very strange.  Thence away by water, and I walked with my Lord Bruncker home, and there at dinner comes a letter from my Lord Sandwich to tell me that he would this day be at Woolwich, and desired me to meet him.  Which fearing might have lain in Sir J. Minnes’ pocket a while, he sending it me, did give my Lord Bruncker, his mistress, and I occasion to talk of him as the most unfit man for business in the world.  Though at last afterwards I found that he was not in this faulty, but hereby I have got a clear evidence of my Lord Bruncker’s opinion of him.  My Lord Bruncker presently ordered his coach to be ready and we to Woolwich, and my Lord Sandwich not being come, we took a boat and about a mile off met him in his Catch, and boarded him, and come up with him; and, after making a little halt at my house, which I ordered, to have my wife see him, we all together by coach to Mr. Boreman’s, where Sir J. Minnes did receive him very handsomely, and there he is to lie; and Sir J. Minnes did give him on the sudden, a very handsome supper and brave discourse, my Lord Bruncker, and Captain Cocke, and Captain Herbert