3rd.  Up, and all the morning till three in the afternoon examining and fitting up my Pursers’ paper and sent it away by an Expresse.  Then comes my wife, and I set her to get supper ready against I go to the Duke of Albemarle and back again; and at the Duke’s with great joy I received the good news of the decrease of the plague this week to 70, and but 253 in all; which is the least Bill hath been known these twenty years in the City.  Through the want of people in London is it, that must make it so low below the ordinary number for Bills.  So home, and find all my good company I had bespoke, as Coleman and his wife, and Laneare, Knipp and her surly husband; and good musique we had, and, among other things, Mrs. Coleman sang my words I set of “Beauty retire,” and I think it is a good song, and they praise it mightily.  Then to dancing and supper, and mighty merry till Mr. Rolt come in, whose pain of the tooth-ake made him no company, and spoilt ours; so he away, and then my wife’s teeth fell of akeing, and she to bed.  So forced to break up all with a good song, and so to bed.

4th.  Up, and to the office, where my Lord Bruncker and I, against Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes and the whole table, for Sir W. Warren in the business of his mast contract, and overcome them and got them to do what I had a mind to, for indeed my Lord being unconcerned in what I aimed at.  So home to dinner, where Mr. Sheldon come by invitation from Woolwich, and as merry as I could be with all my thoughts about me and my wife still in pain of her tooth.  He anon took leave and took Mrs. Barbary his niece home with him, and seems very thankful to me for the L10 I did give him for my wife’s rent of his house, and I am sure I am beholding to him, for it was a great convenience to me, and then my wife home to London by water and I to the office till 8 at night, and so to my Lord Bruncker’s, thinking to have been merry, having appointed a meeting for Sir J. Minnes and his company and Mrs. Knipp again, but whatever hindered I know not, but no company come, which vexed me because it disappointed me of the glut of mirthe I hoped for.  However, good discourse with my Lord and merry, with Mrs. Williams’s descants upon Sir J. Minnes’s and Mrs. Turner’s not coming.  So home and to bed.

5th.  I with my Lord Bruncker and Mrs. Williams by coach with four horses to London, to my Lord’s house in Covent-Guarden.  But, Lord! what staring to see a nobleman’s coach come to town.  And porters every where bow to us; and such begging of beggars!  And a delightfull thing it is to see the towne full of people again as now it is; and shops begin to open, though in many places seven or eight together, and more, all shut; but yet the towne is full, compared with what it used to be.  I mean the City end; for Covent-Guarden and Westminster are yet very empty of people, no Court nor gentry being there.  Set Mrs. Williams down at my Lord’s house and he and I to Sir G. Carteret, at his chamber