19th.  Up, and to my office, there to fit business against the rest meet, which they did by and by, and sat late.  After the office rose (with Creed with me) to Wm. Joyce’s to dinner, being invited, and there find my father and sister, my wife and Mercer, with them, almost dined.  I made myself as complaisant as I could till I had dined, but yet much against my will, and so away after dinner with Creed to Penny’s, my Tailor, where I bespoke a thin stuff suit, and did spend a little time evening some little accounts with Creed and so parted, and I to Sir.  G. Carteret’s by appointment; where I perceive by him the King is going to borrow some money of the City; but I fear it will do no good, but hurt.  He tells me how the Generall—­[The Duke of Albemarle.]—­is displeased, and there have been some high words between the Generall and Sir W. Coventry.  And it may be so; for I do not find Sir W. Coventry so highly commending the Duke as he used to be, but letting fall now and then some little jerkes:  as this day, speaking of newes from Holland, he says, “I find their victory begins to shrinke there, as well as ours here.”  Here I met with Captain Cocke, and he tells me that the first thing the Prince said to the King upon his coming, was complaining of the Commissioners of the Navy; that they could have been abroad in three or four days but for us; that we do not take care of them which I am troubled at, and do fear may in violence break out upon this office some time or other; for we shall not be able to carry on the business.  Thence home, and at my business till late at night, then with my wife into the garden and there sang with Mercer, whom I feel myself begin to love too much by handling of her breasts in a’ morning when she dresses me, they being the finest that ever I saw in my life, that is the truth of it.  So home and to supper with beans and bacon and to bed.

20th.  Up, but in some pain of the collique.  I have of late taken too much cold by washing my feet and going in a thin silke waistcoate, without any other coate over it, and open-breasted, but I hope it will go over.  I did this morning (my father being to go away to-morrow) give my father some money to buy him a horse, and for other things to himself and my mother and sister, among them L20, besides undertaking to pay for other things for them to about L3, which the poor man takes with infinite kindnesse, and I do not thinke I can bestow it better.  Thence by coach to St. James’s as usual to wait on the Duke of York, after having discoursed with Collonell Fitzgerald, whom I met in my way and he returned with me to Westminster, about paying him a sum of 700 and odd pounds, and he bids me defalk L25 for myself,—­[Abate from an amount.]—­which is a very good thing; having done with the Duke I to the Exchequer and there after much ado do get my business quite over of the difficulty of breaking a great tally into little ones and so shall have it done tomorrow.  Thence to