ability.  Thence to White Hall by water (only asking Betty Michell by the way how she did), and there come too late to do any thing at the Council.  So by coach to my periwigg maker’s and tailor’s, and so home, where I find my wife with her flageolet master, which I wish she would practise, and so to the office, and then to Sir W. Batten’s, and then to Sir W. Pen’s, talking and spending time in vain a little while, and then home up to my chamber, and so to supper and to bed, vexed at two or three things, viz. that my wife’s watch proves so bad as it do; the ill state of the office; and Kingdom’s business; at the charge which my mother’s death for mourning will bring me when all paid.

4th.  Up, and going down found Jervas the barber with a periwigg which I had the other day cheapened at Westminster, but it being full of nits, as heretofore his work used to be, I did now refuse it, having bought elsewhere.  So to the office till noon, busy, and then (which I think I have not done three times in my life) left the board upon occasion of a letter of Sir W. Coventry, and meeting Balty at my house I took him with me by water, and to the Duke of Albemarle to give him an account of the business, which was the escaping of some soldiers for the manning of a few ships now going out with Harman to the West Indies, which is a sad consideration that at the very beginning of the year and few ships abroad we should be in such want of men that they do hide themselves, and swear they will not go to be killed and have no pay.  I find the Duke of Albemarle at dinner with sorry company, some of his officers of the Army; dirty dishes, and a nasty wife at table, and bad meat, of which I made but an ill dinner.  Pretty to hear how she talked against Captain Du Tell, the Frenchman, that the Prince and her husband put out the last year; and how, says she, the Duke of York hath made him, for his good services, his Cupbearer; yet he fired more shot into the Prince’s ship, and others of the King’s ships, than of the enemy.  And the Duke of Albemarle did confirm it, and that somebody in the fight did cry out that a little Dutchman, by his ship, did plague him more than any other; upon which they were going to order him to be sunk, when they looked and found it was Du Tell, who, as the Duke of Albemarle says, had killed several men in several of our ships.  He said, but for his interest, which he knew he had at Court, he had hanged him at the yard’s-arm, without staying for a Court-martiall.  One Colonel Howard, at the table, magnified the Duke of Albemarle’s fight in June last, as being a greater action than ever was done by Caesar.  The Duke of Albemarle, did say it had been no great action, had all his number fought, as they should have done, to have beat the Dutch; but of his 55 ships, not above 25 fought.  He did give an account that it was a fight he was forced to:  the Dutch being come in his way, and he being ordered to the buoy of the Nore, he could not pass by them without fighting,