With my Lord, to my Lord Frezendorfe’s, where he dined to-day. Where he told me that he had obtained a promise of the Clerk of the Acts place for me, at which I was glad. Met with Mr. Chetwind, and dined with him at Hargrave’s, the Cornchandler, in St. Martin’s Lane, where a good dinner, where he showed me some good pictures, and an instrument he called an Angelique.
[An angelique is described as a species of guitar in Murray’s “New English Dictionary,” and this passage from the Diary is given as a quotation. The word appears as angelot in Phillips’s “English Dictionary” (1678), and is used in Browning’s “Sordello,” as a “plaything of page or girl.”]
With him to London, changing all my Dutch money at Backwell’s
[Alderman Edward Backwell, an eminent banker and goldsmith, who is frequently mentioned in the Diary. His shop was in Lombard Street. He was ruined by the closing of the Exchequer by Charles ii. in 1672. The crown then owed him L295,994 16s. 6d., in lieu of which the King gave him an annuity of L17,759 13s. 8d. Backwell retired into Holland after the closing of the Exchequer, and died there in 1679. See Hilton Price’s “Handbook of London Bankers,” 1876.]
for English, and then to Cardinal’s Cap, where he and the City Remembrancer who paid for all. Back to Westminster, where my Lord was, and discoursed with him awhile about his family affairs. So he went away, I home and wrote letters into the country, and to bed.