Home to dinner, where Pelting dines with us, and brings some partridges, which is very good meat; and, after dinner, I, and wife, and Mercer, and Deb., to the Duke of York’s house, and saw “Mackbeth,” to our great content, and then home, where the women went to the making of my tubes, and I to the office, and then come Mrs. Turner and her husband to advise about their son, the Chaplain, who is turned out of his ship, a sorrow to them, which I am troubled for, and do give them the best advice I can, and so they gone we to bed.

13th.  Up, and Greeting comes, and there he and I tried some things of Mr. Locke’s for two flageolets, to my great content, and this day my wife begins again to learn of him; for I have a great mind for her to be able to play a part with me.  Thence I to the Office, where all the afternoon [morning??], and then to dinner, where W. Howe dined with me, who tells me for certain that Creed is like to speed in his match with Mrs. Betty Pickering.  Here dined with me also Mr. Hollier, who is mighty vain in his pretence to talk Latin.  So to the Office again all the afternoon till night, very busy, and so with much content home, and made my wife sing and play on the flageolet to me till I slept with great pleasure in bed.

14th.  Up, and by water to White Hall and St. James’s, and to see Sir W. Coventry, and discourse about business of our Office, telling him my trouble there, to see how things are ordered.  I told him also what Cocke told me the other day, but he says there is not much in it, though he do know that this hath been in the eye of some persons to compass for the turning all things in the navy, and that it looks so like a popular thing as that he thinks something may be done in it, but whether so general or no, as I tell it him, he knows not.  Thence to White Hall, and there wait at the Council-chamber door a good while, talking with one or other, and so home by water, though but for a little while, because I am to return to White Hall.  At home I find Symson, putting up my new chimney-piece, in our great chamber, which is very fine, but will cost a great deal of money, but it is not flung away.  So back to White Hall, and after the council up, I with Mr. Wren, by invitation, to Sir Stephen Fox’s to dinner, where the Cofferer and Sir Edward Savage; where many good stories of the antiquity and estates of many families at this day in Cheshire, and that part of the kingdom, more than what is on this side, near London.  My Lady [Fox] dining with us; a very good lady, and a family governed so nobly and neatly as do me good to see it.  Thence the Cofferer, Sir Stephen, and I to the Commissioners of the Treasury about business:  and so I up to the Duke of York, who enquired for what I had promised him, about my observations of the miscarriages of our Office;

     [This refers to the letter on the affairs of the office which Pepys
     prepared, and respecting which, and the proceedings which grew out
     of it, so many references are made in future pages of the Diary.]