17th.  Up, and fitted myself to discourse before the Council about business of tickets.  So to White Hall, where waited on the Duke of York, and then the Council about that business; and I did discourse to their liking, only was too high to assert that nothing could be invented to secure the King more in the business of tickets than there is; which the Duke of Buckingham did except against, and I could have answered, but forbore; but all liked very well.  Thence home, and with my wife and Deb. to the King’s House to see a play revived called The------, a sorry mean play, that vexed us to sit in so much heat of the weather to hear it.  Thence to see Betty Michell newly lain in, and after a little stay we took water and to Spring Garden, and there walked, and supped, and staid late, and with much pleasure, and to bed.  The weather excessive hot, so as we were forced to lie in two beds, and I only with a sheet and rug, which is colder than ever I remember I could bear.

18th.  At the office all the morning.  At noon dined at home and Creed with me, who I do really begin to hate, and do use him with some reservedness.  Here was also my old acquaintance, Will Swan, to see me, who continues a factious fanatick still, and I do use him civilly, in expectation that those fellows may grow great again.  Thence to the office, and then with my wife to the ’Change and Unthanke’s, after having been at Cooper’s and sat there for her picture, which will be a noble picture, but yet I think not so like as Hales’s is.  So home and to my office, and then to walk in the garden, and home to supper and to bed.  They say the King of France is making a war again, in Flanders, with the King of Spain; the King of Spain refusing to give him all that he says was promised him in the treaty.  Creed told me this day how when the King was at my Lord Cornwallis’s when he went last to Newmarket, that being there on a Sunday, the Duke of Buckingham did in the afternoon to please the King make a bawdy sermon to him out of Canticles, and that my Lord Cornwallis did endeavour to get the King a whore, and that must be a pretty girl the daughter of the parson of the place, but that she did get away, and leaped off of some place and killed herself, which if true is very sad.

19th (Lord’s day).  Up, and to my chamber, and there I up and down in the house spent the morning getting things ready against noon, when come Mr. Cooper, Hales, Harris, Mr. Butler, that wrote Hudibras, and Mr. Cooper’s cozen Jacke; and by and by comes Mr. Reeves and his wife, whom I never saw before:  and there we dined:  a good dinner, and company that pleased me mightily, being all eminent men in their way.  Spent all the afternoon in talk and mirth, and in the evening parted, and then my wife and I to walk in the garden, and so home to supper, Mrs. Turner and husband and daughter with us, and then to bed.