his resolution to be in towne to-morrow, and hath good encouragement, blessed be God! to do so, the plague being decreased this week to 56, and the total to 227.  So after going to the Swan in the Palace, and sent for Spicer to discourse about my last Tangier tallys that have some of the words washed out with the rain, to have them new writ, I home, and there did some business and at the office, and so home to supper, and to bed.

                          Diaryof Samuel Pepys. 
                                February
                                1665-1666

February 1st.  Up and to the office, where all the morning till late, and Mr. Coventry with us, the first time since before the plague, then hearing my wife was gone abroad to buy things and see her mother and father, whom she hath not seen since before the plague, and no dinner provided for me ready, I walked to Captain Cocke’s, knowing my Lord Bruncker dined there, and there very merry, and a good dinner.  Thence my Lord and his mistresse, Madam Williams, set me down at the Exchange, and I to Alderman Backewell’s to set all my reckonings straight there, which I did, and took up all my notes.  So evened to this day, and thence to Sir Robert Viner’s, where I did the like, leaving clear in his hands just L2000 of my owne money, to be called for when I pleased.  Having done all this I home, and there to the office, did my business there by the post and so home, and spent till one in the morning in my chamber to set right all my money matters, and so to bed.

2nd.  Up betimes, and knowing that my Lord Sandwich is come to towne with the King and Duke, I to wait upon him, which I did, and find him in very good humour, which I am glad to see with all my heart.  Having received his commands, and discoursed with some of his people about my Lord’s going, and with Sir Roger Cuttance, who was there, and finds himself slighted by Sir W. Coventry, I advised him however to look after employment lest it should be said that my Lord’s friends do forsake the service after he hath made them rich with the prizes.  I to London, and there among other things did look over some pictures at Cade’s for my house, and did carry home a silver drudger

[The dredger was probably the drageoir of France; in low Latin, dragerium, or drageria, in which comfits (dragdes) were kept.  Roquefort says, “The ladies wore a little spice-box, in shape like a watch, to carry dragles, and it was called a drageoir.”  The custom continued certainly till the middle of the last century.  Old Palsgrave, in his “Eclaircissement de la Langue Francaise,” gives “dradge” as spice, rendering it by the French word dragde.  Chaucer says, of his Doctor of Physic, “Full ready hadde he his Apothecaries To send him dragges, and his lattuaries.”  The word sometimes may have signified the pounded condiments in which our forefathers delighted.  It is