hath hot work sometimes to contend with the rest for the Navy, they being all concerned for some other part of the King’s expenses, which they would prefer to this, of the Navy.  He shewed me his closet, with his round table, for him to sit in the middle, very convenient; and I borrowed several books of him, to collect things out of the Navy, which I have not, and so home, and there busy sitting all the morning, and at noon dined, and then all the afternoon busy, till night, and then to Mile-End with my wife and girl, and there drank and eat a joie of salmon, at the Rose and Crown, our old house; and so home to bed.

5th (Lord’s day).  About four in the morning took four pills of Dr. Turberville’s prescribing, for my eyes, and they wrought pretty well most of the morning, and I did get my wife to spend the morning reading of Wilkins’s Reall Character.  At noon comes W. Hewer and Pelling, and young Michell and his wife, and dined with us, and most of the afternoon talking; and then at night my wife to read again, and to supper and to bed.

6th.  Up, and to St. James’s, and there attended the Duke of York, and was there by himself told how angry he was, and did declare to my Lord Anglesey, about his late complaining of things of the Navy to the King in Council, and not to him; and I perceive he is mightily concerned at it, and resolved to reform things therein.  Thence with W. Coventry walked in the Park together a good while, he mighty kind to me.  And hear many pretty stories of my Lord Chancellor’s being heretofore made sport of by Peter Talbot the priest, in his story of the death of Cardinall Bleau;

[It is probable these stories, in ridicule of Clarendon, are nowhere recorded.  Cardinal Jean Balue was the minister of Louis XI. of France.  The reader will remember him in Sir W. Scott’s “Quentin Durward.”  He was confined for eleven years in an iron cage invented by himself in the Chateau de Loches, and died soon after he regained his liberty.—­B.]

by Lord Cottington, in his ‘Dolor de las Tyipas’;

     [Gripes.  It was a joke against Lord Cottington that whenever he was
     seriously ill he declared himself a Roman Catholic, when he was well
     again he returned to the Protestant faith.]

and Tom Killigrew, in his being bred in Ram Ally, and now bound prentice to Lord Cottington, going to Spain with L1000, and two suits of clothes.  Thence home to dinner, and thence to Mr. Cooper’s, and there met my wife and W. Hewer and Deb.; and there my wife first sat for her picture:  but he is a most admirable workman, and good company.  Here comes Harris, and first told us how Betterton is come again upon the stage:  whereupon my wife and company to the [Duke’s] house to see “Henry the Fifth;” while I to attend the Duke of York at the Committee of the Navy, at the Council, where some high dispute between him and W. Coventry about settling pensions upon all Flag-Officers, while unemployed: