Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,606 pages of information about Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete.

Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,606 pages of information about Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete.
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.

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Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.