CLERK OF THE ACTS AND SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY

Transcribed from the shorthand manuscript in the Pepysian library
Magdalene college Cambridge by the Rev.  MYNORS Bright M.A.  Late fellow
and President of the college

(Unabridged)

WITH LORD BRAYBROOKE’S NOTES

Editedwith additions by

Henry B. Wheatley F.S.A.

Diary of Samuel Pepys. 
December
1668

December 1st.  Up, and to the office, where sat all the morning, and at noon with my people to dinner, and so to the office, very busy till night, and then home and made my boy read to me Wilkins’s Reall Character, which do please me mightily, and so after supper to bed with great pleasure and content with my wife.  This day I hear of poor Mr. Clerke, the solicitor, being dead, of a cold, after being not above two days ill, which troubles me mightily, poor man!

2nd.  Up, and at the office all the morning upon some accounts of Sir D. Gawden, and at noon abroad with W. Hewer, thinking to have found Mr. Wren at Captain Cox’s, to have spoke something to him about doing a favour for Will’s uncle Steventon, but missed him.  And so back home and abroad with my wife, the first time that ever I rode in my own coach, which do make my heart rejoice, and praise God, and pray him to bless it to me and continue it.  So she and I to the King’s playhouse, and there sat to avoid seeing Knepp in a box above where Mrs. Williams happened to be, and there saw “The Usurper;” a pretty good play, in all but what is designed to resemble Cromwell and Hugh Peters, which is mighty silly.  The play done, we to White Hall; where my wife staid while I up to the Duchesse’s and Queen’s side, to speak with the Duke of York:  and here saw all the ladies, and heard the silly discourse of the King, with his people about him, telling a story of my Lord Rochester’s having of his clothes stole, while he was with a wench; and his gold all gone, but his clothes found afterwards stuffed into a feather bed by the wench that stole them.  I spoke with the Duke of York, just as he was set down to supper with the King, about our sending of victuals to Sir Thomas Allen’s fleet hence to Cales [Cadiz] to meet him.  And so back to my wife in my coach, and so with great content and joy home, where I made my boy to make an end of the Reall Character, which I begun a great while ago, and do please me infinitely, and indeed is a most worthy labour, and I think mighty easy, though my eyes make me unable to attempt any thing in it.  To-day I hear that Mr. Ackworth’s cause went for him at Guildhall, against his accusers, which I am well enough pleased with.