11th.  Up, and very angry with my boy for lying long a bed and forgetting his lute.  To my office all the morning.  At noon to the ’Change, and so home to dinner.  After dinner to Gresham College to my Lord Brunker and Commissioner Pett, taking, Mr. Castle with me there to discourse over his draught of a ship he is to build for us.  Where I first found reason to apprehend Commissioner Pett to be a man of an ability extraordinary in any thing, for I found he did turn and wind Castle like a chicken in his business, and that most pertinently and mister-like, and great pleasure it was to me to hear them discourse, I, of late having studied something thereof, and my Lord Brunker is a very able person also himself in this sort of business, as owning himself to be a master in the business of all lines and Conicall Sections:  Thence home, where very late at my office doing business to my content, though [God] knows with what ado it was that when I was out I could get myself to come home to my business, or when I was there though late would stay there from going abroad again.  To supper and to bed.  This evening, by a letter from Plymouth, I hear that two of our ships, the Leopard and another, in the Straights, are lost by running aground; and that three more had like to have been so, but got off, whereof Captain Allen one:  and that a Dutch fleete are gone thither; which if they should meet with our lame ships, God knows what would become of them.  This I reckon most sad newes; God make us sensible of it!  This night, when I come home, I was much troubled to hear my poor canary bird, that I have kept these three or four years, is dead.

12th.  Up, and to White Hall about getting a privy seal for felling of the King’s timber for the navy, and to the Lords’ House to speak with my Lord Privy Seale about it, and so to the ’Change, where to my last night’s ill news I met more.  Spoke with a Frenchman who was taken, but released, by a Dutch man-of-war of thirty-six guns (with seven more of the like or greater ships), off the North Foreland, by Margett.  Which is a strange attempt, that they should come to our teeth; but the wind being easterly, the wind that should bring our force from Portsmouth, will carry them away home.  God preserve us against them, and pardon our making them in our discourse so contemptible an enemy!  So home and to dinner, where Mr. Hollyard with us dined.  So to the office, and there late till 11 at night and more, and then home to supper and to bed.

13th.  Up betimes and walked to my Lord Bellasses’s lodgings in Lincolne’s Inne Fieldes, and there he received and discoursed with me in the most respectfull manner that could be, telling me what a character of my judgment, and care, and love to Tangier he had received of me, that he desired my advice and my constant correspondence, which he much valued, and in my courtship, in which, though I understand his designe very well, and that it is only a piece of courtship, yet it is