15th.  Up, and to the office betimes, where busy, and sat all the morning, vexed with more news of Carcasses proceedings at the Council, insomuch as we four, [Sir] J. Minnes, [Sir] W. Batten, (Sir) W. Pen, and myself, did make an appointment to dine with Sir W. Coventry to-day to discourse it with him, which we did by going thither as soon as the office was up, and there dined, and very merry, and many good stories, and after dinner to our discourse about Carcasse, and how much we are troubled that we should be brought, as they say we shall, to defend our report before the Council-board with him, and to have a clerk imposed on us.  He tells us in short that there is no intention in the Lords for the latter, but wholly the contrary.  That they do not desire neither to do anything in disrespect to the Board, and he will endeavour to prevent, as he hath done, our coming to plead at the table with our clerk, and do believe the whole will amount to nothing at the Council, only what he shall declare in behalf of the King against the office, if he offers anything, will and ought to be received, to which we all shew a readiness, though I confess even that (though I think I am as clear as the clearest of them), yet I am troubled to think what trouble a rogue may without cause give a man, though it be only by bespattering a man, and therefore could wish that over, though I fear nothing to be proved.  Thence with much satisfaction, and Sir W. Pen and I to the Duke’s house, where a new play.  The King and Court there:  the house full, and an act begun.  And so went to the King’s, and there saw “The Merry Wives of Windsor:”  which did not please me at all, in no part of it, and so after the play done we to the Duke’s house, where my wife was by appointment in Sir W. Pen’s coach, and she home, and we home, and I to my office, where busy till letters done, and then home to supper and to bed.

16th.  Up, and at the office all the morning, and so at noon to dinner, and after dinner my wife and I to the Duke’s playhouse, where we saw the new play acted yesterday, “The Feign Innocence, or Sir Martin Marr-all;” a play made by my Lord Duke of Newcastle, but, as every body says, corrected by Dryden.  It is the most entire piece of mirth, a complete farce from one end to the other, that certainly was ever writ.  I never laughed so in all my life.  I laughed till my head [ached] all the evening and night with the laughing; and at very good wit therein, not fooling.  The house full, and in all things of mighty content to me.  Thence to the New Exchange with my wife, where, at my bookseller’s, I saw “The History of the Royall Society,” which, I believe, is a fine book, and have bespoke one in quires.  So home, and I to the office a little, and so to my chamber, and read the history of 88—­[See 10th of this month.]—­in Speede, in order to my seeing the play thereof acted to-morrow at the King’s house.  So to supper in some pain by the sudden change of the weather cold and my drinking of cold drink, which I must I fear begin to leave off, though I shall try it as long as I can without much pain.  But I find myself to be full of wind, and my anus to be knit together as it is always with cold.  Every body wonders that we have no news from Bredah of the ratification of the peace; and do suspect that there is some stop in it.  So to bed.