He promises it shall be as good as my wife’s, and I sit to have it full of shadows, and do almost break my neck looking over my shoulder to make the posture for him to work by.  Thence home and to the office, and so home having a great cold, and so my wife and Mrs. Barbary have very great ones, we are at a loss how we all come by it together, so to bed, drinking butter-ale.  This day my W. Hewer comes from Portsmouth and gives me an instance of another piece of knavery of Sir W. Pen, who wrote to Commissioner Middleton, that it was my negligence the other day he was not acquainted, as the board directed, with our clerks coming down to the pay.  But I need no new arguments to teach me that he is a false rogue to me and all the world besides.

18th (Lord’s day).  Up and my cold better, so to church, and then home to dinner, and so walked out to St. James’s Church, thinking to have seen faire Mrs. Butler, but could not, she not being there, nor, I believe, lives thereabouts now.  So walked to Westminster, very fine fair dry weather, but all cry out for lack of rain.  To Herbert’s and drank, and thence to Mrs. Martin’s, and did what I would with her; her husband going for some wine for us.  The poor man I do think would take pains if I can get him a purser’s place, which I will endeavour.  She tells me as a secret that Betty Howlet of the Hall, my little sweetheart, that I used to call my second wife, is married to a younger son of Mr. Michell’s (his elder brother, who should have had her, being dead this plague), at which I am glad, and that they are to live nearer me in Thames Streete, by the Old Swan.  Thence by coach home and to my chamber about some accounts, and so to bed.  Sir Christopher Mings is come home from Hambro without anything done, saving bringing home some pipestaves for us.

19th.  Up betimes and upon a meeting extraordinary at the office most of the morning with Lord Bruncker, Sir W. Coventry, and Sir W. Pen, upon the business of the accounts.  Where now we have got almost as much as we would have we begin to lay all on the Controller, and I fear he will be run down with it, for he is every day less and less capable of doing business.  Thence with my Lord Bruncker, Sir W. Coventry to the ticket office, to see in what little order things are there, and there it is a shame to see how the King is served.  Thence to the Chamberlain of London, and satisfy ourselves more particularly how much credit we have there, which proves very little.  Thence to Sir Robert Long’s, absent.  About much the same business, but have not the satisfaction we would have there neither.  So Sir W. Coventry parted, and my Lord and I to Mrs. Williams’s, and there I saw her closett, where indeed a great many fine things there are, but the woman I hate.  Here we dined, and Sir J. Minnes come to us, and after dinner we walked to the King’s play-house, all in dirt, they being altering of the stage to make it wider.  But God knows when they will begin