broke the ice, but not carried it quite away, the boat did pass through so much of it all along, and that with the crackling and noise that it made me fearfull indeed.  So I forced the watermen to land us on Redriffe side, and so walked together till Sir W. Warren and I parted near his house and thence I walked quite over the fields home by light of linke, one of my watermen carrying it, and I reading by the light of it, it being a very fine, clear, dry night.  So to Captain Cocke’s, and there sat and talked, especially with his Counsellor, about his prize goods, that hath done him good turne, being of the company with Captain Fisher, his name Godderson; here I supped and so home to bed, with great content that the plague is decreased to 152, the whole being but 330.

28th.  Up and to the office, and thence with a great deal of business in my head, dined alone with Cocke.  So home alone strictly about my accounts, wherein I made a good beginning, and so, after letters wrote by the post, to bed.

29th.  Up betimes, and all day long within doors upon my accounts, publique and private, and find the ill effect of letting them go so long without evening, that no soul could have ever understood them but myself, and I with much ado.  But, however, my regularity in all I did and spent do helpe me, and I hope to find them well.  Late at them and to bed.

30th.  Up and to the office, at noon home to dinner, and all the afternoon to my accounts again, and there find myself, to my great joy, a great deal worth above L4000, for which the Lord be praised! and is principally occasioned by my getting L500 of Cocke, for my profit in his bargains of prize goods, and from Mr. Gawden’s making me a present of L500 more, when I paid him 8000 for Tangier.  So to my office to write letters, then to my accounts again, and so to bed, being in great ease of mind.

31st (Lord’s day).  All the morning in my chamber, writing fair the state of my Tangier accounts, and so dined at home.  In the afternoon to the Duke of Albemarle and thence back again by water, and so to my chamber to finish the entry of my accounts and to think of the business I am next to do, which is the stating my thoughts and putting in order my collections about the business of pursers, to see where the fault of our present constitution relating to them lies and what to propose to mend it, and upon this late and with my head full of this business to bed.  Thus ends this year, to my great joy, in this manner.  I have raised my estate from L1300 in this year to L4400.  I have got myself greater interest, I think, by my diligence, and my employments encreased by that of Treasurer for Tangier, and Surveyour of the Victualls.  It is true we have gone through great melancholy because of the great plague, and I put to great charges by it, by keeping my family long at Woolwich, and myself and another part of my family, my clerks, at my charge at Greenwich, and a mayde at