21st.  Up, and my wife and I fell out about the pair of cuffs, which she hath a mind to have to go to see the ladies dancing to-morrow at Betty Turner’s school; and do vex me so that I am resolved to deny them her.  However, by-and-by a way was found that she had them, and I well satisfied, being unwilling to let our difference grow higher upon so small an occasion and frowardness of mine.  Then to the office, my Lord Bruncker and I all the morning answering petitions, which now by a new Council’s order we are commanded to set a day in a week apart for, and we resolve to do it by turn, my Lord and I one week and two others another.  At noon home to dinner, and then my wife and I mighty pleasant abroad, she to the New Exchange and I to the Commissioners of the Treasury, who do sit very close, and are bringing the King’s charges as low as they can; but Sir W. Coventry did here again tell me that he is very serious in what he said to Sir W. Pen and me yesterday about our lending of money to the King; and says that people do talk that we had had the King’s ships at his cost to take prizes, and that we ought to lend the King money more than other people.  I did tell him I will consider it, and so parted; and do find I cannot avoid it.  So to Westminster Hall and there staid a while, and thence to Mrs. Martin’s, and there did take a little pleasure both with her and her sister.  Here sat and talked, and it is a strange thing to see the impudence of the woman, that desires by all means to have her mari come home, only that she might beat liberty to have me para toker her, which is a thing I do not so much desire.  Thence by coach, took up my wife, and home and out to Mile End, and there drank, and so home, and after some little reading in my chamber, to supper and to bed.  This day I sent my cozen Roger a tierce of claret, which I give him.  This morning come two of Captain Cooke’s boys, whose voices are broke, and are gone from the Chapel, but have extraordinary skill; and they and my boy, with his broken voice, did sing three parts; their names were Blaewl and Loggings; but, notwithstanding their skill, yet to hear them sing with their broken voices, which they could not command to keep in tune, would make a man mad—­so bad it was.

22nd.  Up, and to the office; whence Lord Bruncker, J. Minnes, W. Pen, and I, went to examine some men that are put in there, for rescuing of men that were pressed into the service:  and we do plainly see that the desperate condition that we put men into for want of their pay, makes them mad, they being as good men as ever were in the world, and would as readily serve the King again, were they but paid.  Two men leapt overboard, among others, into the Thames, out of the vessel into which they were pressed, and were shot by the soldiers placed there to keep them, two days since; so much people do avoid the King’s service!  And then these men are pressed without money, and so we cannot punish them for any thing,