12th.  Rose before day, and took coach, by daylight, and to Westminster to Sir G. Downing’s, and there met Sir Stephen Fox, and thence he and I to Sir Robert Longs to discourse the business of our orders for money, he for the guards, and I for Tangier, and were a little angry in our concerns, one against the other, but yet parted good friends, and I think I got ground by it.  Thence straight to the office, and there sat all the morning, and then home to dinner, and after dinner I all alone to the Duke of York’s house, and saw “The Tempest,” which, as often as I have seen it, I do like very well, and the house very full.  But I could take little pleasure more than the play, for not being able to look about, for fear of being seen.  Here only I saw a French lady in the pit, with a tunique, just like one of ours, only a handkercher about her neck; but this fashion for a woman did not look decent.  Thence walked to my bookseller’s, and there he did give me a list of the twenty who were nominated for the Commission in Parliament for the Accounts:  and it is strange that of the twenty the Parliament could not think fit to choose their nine, but were fain to add three that were not in the list of the twenty, they being many of them factious people and ringleaders in the late troubles; so that Sir John Talbott did fly out and was very hot in the business of Wildman’s being named, and took notice how he was entertained in the bosom of the Duke of Buckingham, a Privy-counsellor; and that it was fit to be observed by the House, and punished.  The men that I know of the nine I like very well; that is, Mr. Pierrepont, Lord Brereton, and Sir William Turner; and I do think the rest are so, too; but such as will not be able to do this business as it ought to be, to do any good with.  Here I did also see their votes against my Lord Chiefe Justice Keeling, that his proceedings were illegal, and that he was a contemner of Magna Charta (the great preserver of our lives, freedoms, and properties) and an introduction to arbitrary government; which is very high language, and of the same sound with that in the year 1640.  I home, and there wrote my letters, and so to supper and to bed.  This day my Lord Chancellor’s letter was burned at the ‘Change.’

13th.  Up, lying long all alone (my wife lying for these two or three days of sickness alone), thinking of my several businesses in hand, and then rose and to the office, being in some doubt of having my cozen Roger and Lord Hinchinbroke and Sir Thos.  Crew by my cozens invitation at dinner to-day, and we wholly unprovided.  So I away to Westminster, to the Parliament-door, to speak with Roger:  and here I saw my Lord Keeling go into the House to the barr, to have his business heard by the whole House to-day; and a great crowd of people to stare upon him.  Here I hear that the Lords’ Bill for banishing and disabling my Lord Clarendon from bearing any office, or being in the King’s dominions, and its being