4th.  Writing letters all the morning, among others to my Lady Carteret, the first I have wrote to her, telling her the state of the city as to health and other sorrowfull stories, and thence after dinner to Greenwich, to Sir J. Minnes, where I found my Lord Bruncker, and having staid our hour for the justices by agreement, the time being past we to walk in the Park with Mr. Hammond and Turner, and there eat some fruit out of the King’s garden and walked in the Parke, and so back to Sir J. Minnes, and thence walked home, my Lord Bruncker giving me a very neat cane to walk with; but it troubled me to pass by Coome farme where about twenty-one people have died of the plague, and three or four days since I saw a dead corps in a coffin lie in the Close unburied, and a watch is constantly kept there night and day to keep the people in, the plague making us cruel, as doggs, one to another.

5th.  Up, and walked with some Captains and others talking to me to Greenwich, they crying out upon Captain Teddiman’s management of the business of Bergen, that he staid treating too long while he saw the Dutch fitting themselves, and that at first he might have taken every ship, and done what he would with them.  How true I cannot tell.  Here we sat very late and for want of money, which lies heavy upon us, did nothing of business almost.  Thence home with my Lord Bruncker to dinner where very merry with him and his doxy.  After dinner comes Colonell Blunt in his new chariot made with springs; as that was of wicker, wherein a while since we rode at his house.  And he hath rode, he says, now this journey, many miles in it with one horse, and out-drives any coach, and out-goes any horse, and so easy, he says.  So for curiosity I went into it to try it, and up the hill to the heath, and over the cart-rutts and found it pretty well, but not so easy as he pretends, and so back again, and took leave of my Lord and drove myself in the chariot to the office, and there ended my letters and home pretty betimes and there found W. Pen, and he staid supper with us and mighty merry talking of his travells and the French humours, etc., and so parted and to bed.

6th.  Busy all the morning writing letters to several, so to dinner, to London, to pack up more things thence; and there I looked into the street and saw fires burning in the street, as it is through the whole City, by the Lord Mayor’s order.  Thence by water to the Duke of Albemarle’s:  all the way fires on each side of the Thames, and strange to see in broad daylight two or three burials upon the Bankeside, one at the very heels of another:  doubtless all of the plague; and yet at least forty or fifty people going along with every one of them.  The Duke mighty pleasant with me; telling me that he is certainly informed that the Dutch were not come home upon the 1st instant, and so he hopes our fleete may meet with them, and here to my great joy I got him to sign bills for the several sums I have paid