the people did do better, without the great actors, than I did expect, but yet far short of what they do when they are there, which I was glad to find the difference of.  Thence to rights home, and there to the office to my business hard, being sorry to have made this scape without my wife, but I have a good salvo to my oath in doing it.  By and by, in the evening, comes Sir W. Batten’s Mingo to me to pray me to come to his master and Sir Richard Ford, who have very ill news to tell me.  I knew what it was, it was about our trial for a good prize to-day, “The Phoenix,”

[There are references to the “Phoenix,” a Dutch ship taken as a prize, among the State Papers (see “Calendar,” 1666-67, p. 404).  Pepys appears to have got into trouble at a later date in respect to this same ship, for among the Rawlinson MSS. (A. 170) are “Papers relating to the charge brought against him in the House of Commons in 1689 with reference to the ship Phoenix and the East India Company in 1681-86.”]

a worth two or L3000.  I went to them, where they told me with much trouble how they had sped, being cast and sentenced to make great reparation for what we had embezzled, and they did it so well that I was much troubled at it, when by and by Sir W. Batten asked me whether I was mortified enough, and told me we had got the day, which was mighty welcome news to me and us all.  But it is pretty to see what money will do.  Yesterday, Walker was mighty cold on our behalf, till Sir W. Batten promised him, if we sped in this business of the goods, a coach; and if at the next trial we sped for the ship, we would give him a pair of horses.  And he hath strove for us today like a prince, though the Swedes’ Agent was there with all the vehemence he could to save the goods, but yet we carried it against him.  This put me in mighty good heart, and then we go to Sir W. Pen, who is come back to-night from Chatham, and did put him into the same condition, and then comforted him.  So back to my office, and wrote an affectionate and sad letter to my father about his and my mother’s illness, and so home to supper and to bed late.

22nd.  Up and by coach to Sir Ph.  Warwicke about business for Tangier about money, and then to Sir Stephen Fox to give him account of a little service I have done him about money coming to him from our office, and then to Lovett’s and saw a few baubling things of their doing which are very pretty, but the quality of the people, living only by shifts, do not please me, that it makes me I do no more care for them, nor shall have more acquaintance with them after I have got my Lady Castlemayne’s picture home.  So to White Hall, where the King at Chapel, and I would not stay, but to Westminster to Howlett’s, and there, he being not well, I sent for a quart of claret and burnt it and drank, and had a ‘basado’ or three or four of Sarah, whom ‘je trouve ici’, and so by coach to Sir Robt.  Viner’s about my accounts with him, and so to the ’Change,