3rd.  Up and by water with Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes to White Hall to the Duke of Albemarle, where, after a little business, we parted, and I to the Harp and Ball, and there staid a while talking to Mary, and so home to dinner.  After dinner to the Duke of Albemarle’s again, and so to the Swan, and there ‘demeurais un peu’de temps con la fille’, and so to the Harp and Ball, and alone ‘demeurais un peu de temps baisant la’, and so away home and late at the office about letters, and so home, resolving from this night forwards to close all my letters, if possible, and end all my business at the office by daylight, and I shall go near to do it and put all my affairs in the world in good order, the season growing so sickly, that it is much to be feared how a man can escape having a share with others in it, for which the good Lord God bless me, or to be fitted to receive it.  So after supper to bed, and mightily troubled in my sleep all night with dreams of Jacke Cole, my old schoolfellow, lately dead, who was born at the same time with me, and we reckoned our fortunes pretty equal.  God fit me for his condition!

4th.  Up, and sat at the office all the morning.  At noon to the ’Change and thence to the Dolphin, where a good dinner at the cost of one Mr. Osbaston, who lost a wager to Sir W. Batten, Sir W. Rider, and Sir R. Ford, a good while since and now it is spent.  The wager was that ten of our ships should not have a fight with ten of the enemy’s before Michaelmas.  Here was other very good company, and merry, and at last in come Mr. Buckeworth, a very fine gentleman, and proves to be a Huntingdonshire man.  Thence to my office and there all the afternoon till night, and so home to settle some accounts of Tangier and other papers.  I hear this day the Duke and Prince Rupert are both come back from sea, and neither of them go back again.  The latter I much wonder at, but it seems the towne reports so, and I am very glad of it.  This morning I did a good piece of work with Sir W. Warren, ending the business of the lotterys, wherein honestly I think I shall get above L100.  Bankert, it seems, is come home with the little fleete he hath been abroad with, without doing any thing, so that there is nobody of an enemy at sea.  We are in great hopes of meeting with the Dutch East India fleete, which is mighty rich, or with De Ruyter, who is so also.  Sir Richard Ford told me this day, at table, a fine account, how the Dutch were like to have been mastered by the present Prince of Orange

[The period alluded to is 1650, when the States-General disbanded part of the forces which the Prince of Orange (William) wished to retain.  The prince attempted, but unsuccessfully, to possess himself of Amsterdam.  In the same year he died, at the early age of twenty-four; some say of the small-pox; others, with Sir Richard Ford, say of poison.—­B.]

his father to be besieged in Amsterdam, having drawn