yet was, at the Committee for Tangier, angry that I should offer to suffer a bill of exchange to be protested.  So my Lord did bid me take heed, for that I might easily suppose I could not want enemies, no more than others.  In all he speaks with the greatest trust and love and confidence in what I say or do, that a man can do.  After this discourse ended we sat down to dinner and mighty merry, among other things, at the Bill brought into the House to make it felony to break bulke, which, as my Lord says well, will make that no prizes shall be taken, or, if taken, shall be sunke after plundering; and the Act for the method of gathering this last L1,250,000 now voted, and how paid wherein are several strange imperfections.  After dinner my Lord by a ketch down to Erith, where the Bezan was, it blowing these last two days and now both night and day very hard southwardly, so that it has certainly drove the Dutch off the coast.  My Lord being gone I to the office, and there find Captain Ferrers, who tells me his wife is come to town to see him, having not seen him since 15 weeks ago at his first going to sea last.  She is now at a Taverne and stays all night, so I was obliged to give him my house and chamber to lie in, which he with great modesty and after much force took, and so I got Mr. Evelyn’s coach to carry her thither, and the coach coming back, I with Mr. Evelyn to Deptford, where a little while with him doing a little business, and so in his coach back again to my lodgings, and there sat with Mrs. Ferrers two hours, and with my little girle, Mistress Frances Tooker, and very pleasant.  Anon the Captain comes, and then to supper very merry, and so I led them to bed.  And so to bed myself, having seen my pretty little girle home first at the next door.

26th.  Up, and, leaving my guests to make themselves ready, I to the office, and thither comes Sir Jer.  Smith and Sir Christopher Mings to see me, being just come from Portsmouth and going down to the Fleete.  Here I sat and talked with them a good while and then parted, only Sir Christopher Mings and I together by water to the Tower; and I find him a very witty well-spoken fellow, and mighty free to tell his parentage, being a shoemaker’s son, to whom he is now going, and I to the ’Change, where I hear how the French have taken two and sunk one of our merchant-men in the Streights, and carried the ships to Toulon; so that there is no expectation but we must fall out with them.  The ’Change pretty full, and the town begins to be lively again, though the streets very empty, and most shops shut.  So back again I and took boat and called for Sir Christopher Mings at St. Katharine’s, who was followed with some ordinary friends, of which, he says, he is proud, and so down to Greenwich, the wind furious high, and we with our sail up till I made it be taken down.  I took him, it being 3 o’clock, to my lodgings and did give him a good dinner and so parted, he being pretty close to me as to any business of the fleete,