our computation of the expence of the fleete.  I find Sir W. Coventry willing enough to accept of any thing to confront the Generalls.  But a great supply must be made, and shall be in grace of God!  But, however, our accounts here will be found the true ones.  Having done here, and much work set me, I with greater content home than I thought I should have done, and so to the office a while, and then home, and a while in my new closet, which delights me every day more and more, and so late to bed.

29th.  Up betimes, and there to fit some Tangier accounts, and then, by appointment, to my Lord Bellasses, but about Paul’s thought of the chant paper I should carry with me, and so fain to come back again, and did, and then met with Sir W. Pen, and with him to my Lord Bellasses, he sitting in the coach the while, while I up to my Lord and there offered him my account of the bills of exchange I had received and paid for him, wherein we agree all but one L200 bill of Vernatty’s drawing, wherein I doubt he hath endeavoured to cheate my Lord; but that will soon appear.  Thence took leave, and found Sir W. Pen talking to Orange Moll, of the King’s house, who, to our great comfort, told us that they begun to act on the 18th of this month.  So on to St. James’s, in the way Sir W. Pen telling me that Mr. Norton, that married Sir J. Lawson’s daughter, is dead.  She left L800 a year jointure, a son to inherit the whole estate.  She freed from her father-in-law’s tyranny, and is in condition to helpe her mother, who needs it; of which I am glad, the young lady being very pretty.  To St. James’s, and there Sir W. Coventry took Sir W. Pen and me apart, and read to us his answer to the Generalls’ letter to the King that he read last night; wherein he is very plain, and states the matter in full defence of himself and of me with him, which he could not avoid; which is a good comfort to me, that I happen to be involved with him in the same cause.  And then, speaking of the supplies which have been made to this fleete, more than ever in all kinds to any, even that wherein the Duke of Yorke himself was, “Well,” says he, “if this will not do, I will say, as Sir J. Falstaffe did to the Prince, ’Tell your father, that if he do not like this let him kill the next Piercy himself,’”—­["King Henry iv.,” Part I, act v., sc. 4.]—­and so we broke up, and to the Duke, and there did our usual business.  So I to the Parke and there met Creed, and he and I walked to Westminster to the Exchequer, and thence to White Hall talking of Tangier matters and Vernatty’s knavery, and so parted, and then I homeward and met Mr. Povy in Cheapside, and stopped and talked a good while upon the profits of the place which my Lord Bellasses hath made this last year, and what share we are to have of it, but of this all imperfect, and so parted, and I home, and there find Mrs. Mary Batelier, and she dined with us; and thence I took them to Islington, and there eat a custard; and so back to Moorfields, and shewed Batelier, with