out with my wife and him, and carried him to an instrument-maker’s shop in Chancery Lane, that was once a ’Prentice of Greatorex’s, but the master was not within, and there he [Gibson] shewed me a Parallelogram in brass, which I like so well that I will buy, and therefore bid it be made clean and fit for me.  And so to my cozen Turner’s, and there just spoke with The., the mother not being at home; and so to the New Exchange, and thence home to my letters; and so home to supper and to bed.  This morning I made a slip from the Office to White Hall, expecting Povy’s business at a Committee of Tangier, at which I would be, but it did not meet, and so I presently back.

5th.  Up betimes, by coach to Sir W. Coventry’s, and with him by coach to White Hall, and there walked in the garden talking of several things, and by my visit to keep fresh my interest in him; and there he tells me how it hath been talked that he was to go one of the Commissioners to Ireland, which he was resolved never to do, unless directly commanded; for he told me that for to go thither, while the Chief Secretary of State was his professed enemy, was to undo himself; and, therefore, it were better for him to venture being unhappy here, than to go further off, to be undone by some obscure instructions, or whatever other way of mischief his enemies should cut out for him.  He mighty kind to me, and so parted, and thence home, calling in two or three places—­among others, Dancre’s, where I find him beginning of a piece for me, of Greenwich, which will please me well, and so home to dinner, and very busy all the afternoon, and so at night home to supper, and to bed.

6th.  Up, and to the office, where all the morning, and thence after dinner to the King’s playhouse, and there,—­in an upper box, where come in Colonel Poynton and Doll Stacey, who is very fine, and, by her wedding-ring, I suppose he hath married her at last,—­did see “The Moor of Venice:”  but ill acted in most parts; Mohun, which did a little surprise me, not acting Iago’s part by much so well as Clun used to do; nor another Hart’s, which was Cassio’s; nor, indeed, Burt doing the Moor’s so well as I once thought he did.  Thence home, and just at Holborn Conduit the bolt broke, that holds the fore-wheels to the perch, and so the horses went away with them, and left the coachman and us; but being near our coachmaker’s, and we staying in a little ironmonger’s shop, we were presently supplied with another, and so home, and there to my letters at the office, and so to supper and to bed.

7th (Lord’s day).  My wife mighty peevish in the morning about my lying unquietly a-nights, and she will have it that it is a late practice, from my evil thoughts in my dreams, . . . .and mightily she is troubled about it; but all blew over, and I up, and to church, and so home to dinner, where she in a worse fit, which lasted all the afternoon, and shut herself up, in her closet, and I mightily grieved