the Fathers.  And by and by he and I to talk, and the company very merry at my defending Cambridge against Oxford:  and I made much use of my French and Spanish here, to my great content.  But the dinner not extraordinary at all, either for quantity or quality.  Thence home, where my wife ill of those upon the maid’s bed, and troubled at my being abroad.  So I to the office, and there till night, and then to her, and she read to me the Epistle of Cassandra, which is very good indeed; and the better to her, because recommended by Sheres.  So to supper, and to bed.

6th.  Up, and by coach to Sir W. Coventry’s, but he gone out.  I by water back to the Office, and there all the morning; then to dinner, and then to the Office again, and anon with my wife by coach to take the ayre, it being a noble day, as far as the Greene Man, mightily pleased with our journey, and our condition of doing it in our own coach, and so home, and to walk in the garden, and so to supper and to bed, my eyes being bad with writing my journal, part of it, to-night.

7th.  Up, and by coach to W. Coventry’s; and there to talk with him a great deal with great content; and so to the Duke of York, having a great mind to speak to him about Tangier; but, when I come to it, his interest for my Lord Middleton is such that I dare not.  So to the Treasury chamber, and then walked home round by the Excise Office, having by private vows last night in prayer to God Almighty cleared my mind for the present of the thoughts of going to Deb. at Greenwich, which I did long after.  I passed by Guildhall, which is almost finished, and saw a poor labourer carried by, I think, dead with a fall, as many there are, I hear.  So home to dinner, and then to the office a little, and so to see my Lord Brouncker, who is a little ill of the gout; and there Madam Williams told me that she heard that my wife was going into France this year, which I did not deny, if I can get time, and I pray God I may.  But I wondering how she come to know it, she tells me a woman that my wife spoke to for a maid, did tell her so, and that a lady that desires to go thither would be glad to go in her company.  Thence with my wife abroad, with our coach, most pleasant weather; and to Hackney, and into the marshes, where I never was before, and thence round about to Old Ford and Bow; and coming through the latter home, there being some young gentlewomen at a door, and I seeming not to know who they were, my wife’s jealousy told me presently that I knew well enough it was that damned place where Deb. dwelt, which made me swear very angrily that it was false, as it was, and I carried [her] back again to see the place, and it proved not so, so I continued out of humour a good while at it, she being willing to be friends, so I was by and by, saying no more of it.  So home, and there met with a letter from Captain Silas Taylor, and, with it, his written copy of a play that he hath wrote, and intends to have acted.—­It is