present is great, and will put the King and Commons to some new counsels certainly.  So home to supper and to bed.  Sir W. Pen I find in much trouble this evening, having been called to the Committee this afternoon, about the business of prizes.  Sir Richard Ford told us this evening an odd story of the basenesse of the late Lord Mayor, Sir W. Bolton, in cheating the poor of the City, out of the collections made for the people that were burned, of L1800; of which he can give no account, and in which he hath forsworn himself plainly, so as the Court of Aldermen have sequestered him from their Court till he do bring in an account, which is the greatest piece of roguery that they say was ever found in a Lord Mayor.  He says also that this day hath been made appear to them that the Keeper of Newgate, at this day, hath made his house the only nursery of rogues, and whores, and pickpockets, and thieves in the world; where they were bred and entertained, and the whole society met:  and that, for the sake of the Sheriffes, they durst not this day committ him, for fear of making him let out the prisoners, but are fain to go by artifice to deal with him.  He tells me, also, speaking of the new street that is to be made from Guild Hall down to Cheapside, that the ground is already, most of it, bought.  And tells me of one particular, of a man that hath a piece of ground lieing in the very middle of the street that must be; which, when the street is cut out of it, there will remain ground enough, of each side, to build a house to front the street.  He demanded L700 for the ground, and to be excused paying any thing for the melioration of the rest of his ground that he was to keep.  The Court consented to give him L700, only not to abate him the consideration:  which the man denied; but told them, and so they agreed, that he would excuse the City the L700, that he might have the benefit of the melioration without paying any thing for it.  So much some will get by having the City burned!  But he told me that in other cases ground, by this means, that was not 4d. a-foot before, will now, when houses are built, be worth 15s. a-foot.  But he tells me that the common standard now reckoned on between man and man, in places where there is no alteration of circumstances, but only the houses burnt, there the ground, which, with a house on it, did yield L100 a-year, is now reputed worth L33 6s. 8d.; and that this is the common market-price between one man and another, made upon a good and moderate medium.

4th.  At the office all the morning.  At noon to dinner, and presently with my wife abroad, whom and her girle I leave at Unthanke’s, and so to White Hall in expectation of waiting on the Duke of York to-day, but was prevented therein, only at Mr. Wren’s chamber there I hear that the House of Lords did send down the paper which my Lord Chancellor left behind him, directed to the Lords, to be seditious and scandalous; and the Commons have voted that it