11th.  Up, and to Sir W. Coventry, to the Tower, where I walked and talked with him an hour alone, from one good thing to another:  who tells me that he hears that the Commission is gone down to the King, with a blank to fill, for his place in the Treasury:  and he believes it will be filled with one of our Treasurers of the Navy, but which he knows not, but he believes it will be Osborne.  We walked down to the Stone Walk, which is called, it seems, my Lord of Northumberland’s walk, being paved by some one of that title, that was prisoner there:  and at the end of it, there is a piece of iron upon the wall, with, his armes upon it, and holes to put in a peg, for every turn that they make upon that walk.  So away to the Office, where busy all the morning, and so to dinner, and so very busy all the afternoon, at my Office, late; and then home tired, to supper, with content with my wife, and so to bed, she pleasing me, though I dare not own it, that she hath hired a chambermaid; but she, after many commendations, told me that she had one great fault, and that was, that she was very handsome, at which I made nothing, but let her go on; but many times to-night she took occasion to discourse of her handsomeness, and the danger she was in by taking her, and that she did doubt yet whether it would be fit for her, to take her.  But I did assure her of my resolutions to have nothing to do with her maids, but in myself I was glad to have the content to have a handsome one to look on.

12th.  Up, and abroad, with my own coach, to Auditor Beale’s house, and thence with W. Hewer to his Office, and there with great content spent all the morning looking over the Navy accounts of several years, and the several patents of the Treasurers, which was more than I did hope to have found there.  About noon I ended there, to my great content, and giving the clerks there 20s. for their trouble, and having sent for W. Howe to me to discourse with him about the Patent Office records, wherein I remembered his brother to be concerned, I took him in my coach with W. Hewer and myself towards Westminster; and there he carried me to Nott’s, the famous bookbinder, that bound for my Lord Chancellor’s library; and here I did take occasion for curiosity to bespeak a book to be bound, only that I might have one of his binding.  Thence back to Graye’s Inne:  and, at the next door, at a cook’s-shop of Howe’s acquaintance, we bespoke dinner, it being now two o’clock; and in the meantime he carried us into Graye’s Inne, to his chamber, where I never was before; and it is very pretty, and little, and neat, as he was always.  And so, after a little stay, and looking over a book or two there, we carried a piece of my Lord Coke with us, and to our dinner, where, after dinner, he read at my desire a chapter in my Lord Coke about perjury, wherein I did learn a good deal touching oaths, and so away to the Patent Office; in Chancery Lane, where his brother Jacke, being newly broke by running in debt, and growing an