10th.  Up, and to the office betimes, and there all the morning very busy causing papers to be entered and sorted to put the office in order against the Parliament.  At noon home to dinner, and then to the office again close all the afternoon upon the same occasion with great pleasure till late, and then with my wife and Mercer in the garden and sung, and then home and sung, and to supper with great content, and so to bed.  The Duke of York is come back last night from Harwich, the news he brings I know not, nor hear anything to-day from Dover, whether the enemy have made any attempt there as was expected.  This day our girle Mary, whom Payne helped us to, to be under his daughter, when she come to be our cook-mayde, did go away declaring that she must be where she might earn something one day, and spend it and play away the next.  But a good civil wench, and one neither wife nor I did ever give angry word to, but she has this silly vanity that she must play.

11th.  Up betimes and to my office, and there busy till the office (which was only Sir T. Harvy and myself) met, and did little business and then broke up.  He tells me that the Council last night did sit close to determine of the King’s answer about the peace, and that though he do not certainly know, yet by all discourse yesterday he do believe it is peace, and that the King had said it should be peace, and had bidden Alderman Baclewell to declare [it] upon the ’Change.  It is high time for us to have peace that the King and Council may get up their credits and have time to do it, for that indeed is the bottom of all our misery, that nobody have any so good opinion of the King and his Council and their advice as to lend money or venture their persons, or estates, or pains upon people that they know cannot thrive with all that we can do, but either by their corruption or negligence must be undone.  This indeed is the very bottom of every man’s thought, and the certain ground that we must be ruined unless the King change his course, or the Parliament come and alter it.  At noon dined alone with my wife.  All the afternoon close at the office, very hard at gathering papers and putting things in order against the Parliament, and at night home with my wife to supper, and then to bed, in hopes to have all things in my office in good condition in a little time for any body to examine, which I am sure none else will.

12th.  Up betimes and to my chamber, there doing business, and by and by comes Greeting and begun a new month with him, and now to learn to set anything from the notes upon the flageolet, but, Lord! to see how like a fool he goes about to give me direction would make a man mad.  I then out and by coach to White Hall and to the Treasury chamber, where did a little business, and thence to the Exchequer to Burges, about Tangier business, and so back again, stepping into the Hall a little, and then homeward by coach, and met at White Hall with Sir H. Cholmly,