spoke to me, desires his being better acquainted with me; and [said] that, at table where he was, he never heard so much said of any man as of me, in his whole life.  We waited on the Duke of York, and thence into the Gallery, where the House of Lords waited the King’s coming out of the Park, which he did by and by; and there, in the Vane-room, my Lord Keeper delivered a message to the King, the Lords being about him, wherein the Barons of England, from many good arguments, very well expressed in the part he read out of, do demand precedence in England of all noblemen of either of the King’s other two kingdoms, be their title what it will; and did shew that they were in England reputed but as Commoners, and sat in the House of Commons, and at conferences with the Lords did stand bare.  It was mighty worth my hearing:  but the King did only say that he would consider of it, and so dismissed them.  Thence Brouncker and I to the Committee of Miscarriages sitting in the Court of Wards, expecting with Sir D. Gawden to have been heard against Prince Rupert’s complaints for want of victuals.  But the business of Holmes’s charge against Sir Jer.  Smith, which is a most shameful scandalous thing for Flag officers to accuse one another of, and that this should be heard here before men that understand it not at all, and after it hath been examined and judged in before the King and Lord High Admirall and other able seamen to judge, it is very hard.  But this business did keep them all the afternoon, so we not heard but put off to another day.  Thence, with the Lieutenant of the Tower, in his coach home; and there, with great pleasure, with my wife, talking and playing at cards a little—­she, and I, and W. Hewer, and Deb., and so, after a little supper, I to bed.

7th.  Up, and to the office, where all the morning, at noon home to dinner, where Mercer with us, and after dinner she, my wife, Deb., and I, to the King’s playhouse, and there saw “The Spanish Gipsys,” the second time of acting, and the first that I saw it.  A very silly play, only great variety of dances, and those most excellently done, especially one part by one Hanes, only lately come thither from the Nursery, an understanding fellow, but yet, they say, hath spent L1000 a-year before he come thither.  This day my wife and I full of thoughts about Mrs. Pierces sending me word that she, and my old company, Harris and Knipp, would come and dine with us next Wednesday, how we should do-to receive or put them off, my head being, at this time, so full of business, and my wife in no mind to have them neither, and yet I desire it.  Come to no resolution tonight.  Home from the playhouse to the office, where I wrote what I had to write, and among others to my father to congratulate my sister’s marriage, and so home to supper a little and then to bed.