between the old people and them are too great to be
presently forgot, and so he do propose that it will
be cheaper for him to put her to board at a place
he is offered at Lee, and I, seeing that I am not
like to be troubled with the finding a place, and having
given him so much good advice, do leave them to stand
and fall as they please, having discharged myself
as a friend, and not likely to be accountable for
her nor be troubled with her, if he should miscarry
I mean, as to her lodging, and so broke up. Then
he and I to make a visit to [Sir] W. Pen, who hath
thought fit to show kindness to Balty in this business,
indeed though he be a false rogue, but it was he knew
a thing easy to do. Thence together to my shoemaker’s,
cutler’s, tailor’s, and up and down about
my mourning, and in my way do observe the great streets
in the city are marked out with piles drove into the
ground; and if ever it be built in that form with
so fair streets, it will be a noble sight. So
to the Council chamber, but staid not there, but to
a periwigg-maker’s of his acquaintance, and
there bought two periwiggs, mighty fine; indeed, too
fine, I thought, for me; but he persuaded me, and I
did buy them for L4 10s. the two. Then to the
Exchange and bought gloves, and so to the Bull-Head
Taverne, whither he brought my, French gun; and one
Truelocke, the famous gunsmith, that is a mighty ingenious
man, and he did take my gun in pieces, and made me
understand the secrets thereof and upon the whole
I do find it a very good piece of work, and truly wrought;
but for certain not a thing to be used much with safety:
and he do find that this very gun was never yet shot
off: I was mighty satisfied with it and him,
and the sight of so much curiosity of this kind.
Here he brought also a haberdasher at my desire,
and I bought a hat of him, and so away and called
away my wife from his house, and so home and to read,
and then to supper and to bed, my head full in behalf
of Balty, who tells me strange stories of his mother.
Among others, how she, in his absence in Ireland,
did pawne all the things that he had got in his service
under Oliver, and run of her own accord, without her
husband’s leave, into Flanders, and that his
purse, and 4s. a week which his father receives of
the French church, is all the subsistence his father
and mother have, and that about L20 a year maintains
them; which, if it please God, I will find one way
or other to provide for them, to remove that scandal
away.
30th. Up, and the French periwigg maker of whom I bought two yesterday comes with them, and I am very well pleased with them. So to the office, where all the morning. At noon home to dinner, and thence with my wife’s knowledge and leave did by coach go see the silly play of my Lady Newcastle’s, called “The Humourous Lovers;” the most silly thing that ever come upon a stage. I was sick to see it, but yet would not but have seen it, that I might the better understand her. Here