10th.  Up, and at my office all the morning, and several people with me, Sir W. Warren, who I do every day more and more admire for a miracle of cunning and forecast in his business, and then Captain Cocke, with whom I walked in the garden, and he tells me how angry the Court is at the late Proviso brought in by the House.  How still my Lord Chancellor is, not daring to do or say any thing to displease the Parliament; that the Parliament is in a very ill humour, and grows every day more and more so; and that the unskilfulness of the Court, and their difference among one another, is the occasion of all not agreeing in what they would have, and so they give leisure and occasion to the other part to run away with what the Court would not have.  Then comes Mr. Gawden, and he and I in my chamber discoursing about his business, and to pay him some Tangier orders which he delayed to receive till I had money instead of tallies, but do promise me consideration for my victualling business for this year, and also as Treasurer for Tangier, which I am glad of, but would have been gladder to have just now received it.  He gone, I alone to dinner at home, my wife and her people being gone down the river to-day for pleasure, though a cold day and dark night to come up.  In the afternoon I to the Excise Office to enter my tallies, which I did, and come presently back again, and then to the office and did much business, and then home to supper, my wife and people being come well and hungry home from Erith.  Then I to begin the setting of a Base to “It is Decreed,” and so to bed.

11th.  Up, and to the office, where we sat, and at noon home to dinner, a small dinner because of a good supper.  After dinner my wife and I by coach to St. Clement’s Church, to Mrs. Turner’s lodgings, hard by, to take our leaves of her.  She is returning into the North to her children, where, I perceive, her husband hath clearly got the mastery of her, and she is likely to spend her days there, which for her sake I am a little sorry for, though for his it is but fit she should live where he hath a mind.  Here were several people come to see and take leave of her, she going to-morrow:  among others, my Lady Mordant, which was Betty Turner, a most homely widow, but young, and pretty rich, and good natured.  Thence, having promised to write every month to her, we home, and I to my office, while my wife to get things together for supper.  Dispatching my business at the office.  Anon come our guests, old Mr. Batelier, and his son and daughter, Mercer, which was all our company.  We had a good venison pasty and other good cheer, and as merry as in so good, innocent, and understanding company I could be.  He is much troubled that wines, laden by him in France before the late proclamation was out, cannot now be brought into England, which is so much to his and other merchants’ loss.  We sat long at supper and then to talk, and so late parted and so to bed.  This day the Poll Bill was to be passed, and great endeavours used to take away the Proviso.