where I hear for certain that we are going on with
our treaty of peace, and that we are to treat at Bredah.
But this our condescension people do think will undo
us, and I do much fear it. So home to dinner,
where my wife having dressed herself in a silly dress
of a blue petticoat uppermost, and a white satin waistcoat
and whitehood, though I think she did it because her
gown is gone to the tailor’s, did, together
with my being hungry, which always makes me peevish,
make me angry, but when my belly was full were friends
again, and dined and then by water down to Greenwich
and thence walked to Woolwich, all the way reading
Playford’s “Introduction to Musique,”
wherein are some things very pretty. At Woolwich
I did much business, taking an account of the state
of the ships there under hand, thence to Blackwall,
and did the like for two ships we have repairing there,
and then to Deptford and did the like there, and so
home. Captain Perriman with me from Deptford,
telling me many particulars how the King’s business
is ill ordered, and indeed so they are, God knows!
So home and to the office, where did business, and
so home to my chamber, and then to supper and to bed.
Landing at the Tower to-night I met on Tower Hill
with Captain Cocke and spent half an hour walking
in the dusk of the evening with him, talking of the
sorrowful condition we are in, that we must be ruined
if the Parliament do not come and chastize us, that
we are resolved to make a peace whatever it cost,
that the King is disobliging the Parliament in this
interval all that may be, yet his money is gone and
he must have more, and they likely not to give it,
without a great deal of do. God knows what the
issue of it will be. But the considering that
the Duke of York, instead of being at sea as Admirall,
is now going from port to port, as he is at this day
at Harwich, and was the other day with the King at
Sheernesse, and hath ordered at Portsmouth how fortifications
shall be made to oppose the enemy, in case of invasion,
[which] is to us a sad consideration, and as shameful
to the nation, especially after so many proud vaunts
as we have made against the Dutch, and all from the
folly of the Duke of Albemarle, who made nothing of
beating them, and Sir John Lawson he always declared
that we never did fail to beat them with lesser numbers
than theirs, which did so prevail with the King as
to throw us into this war.
23rd. At the office all the morning, where Sir
W. Pen come, being returned from Chatham, from considering
the means of fortifying the river Medway, by a chain
at the stakes, and ships laid there with guns to keep
the enemy from coming up to burn our ships; all our
care now being to fortify ourselves against their
invading us. At noon home to dinner, and then
to the office all the afternoon again, where Mr. Moore
come, who tells me that there is now no doubt made
of a peace being agreed on, the King having declared
this week in Council that they would treat at Bredagh.
He gone I to my office, where busy late, and so to
supper and to bed. Vexed with our mayde Luce,
our cook-mayde, who is a good drudging servant in
everything else, and pleases us, but that she will
be drunk, and hath been so last night and all this
day, that she could not make clean the house.
My fear is only fire.