the girl, and I took them to Wilkinson’s the cook’s in King Street (where I find the master of the house hath been dead for some time), and there dined, and thence by one o’clock to the King’s house:  a new play, “The Duke of Lerma,” of Sir Robert Howard’s:  where the King and Court was; and Knepp and Nell spoke the prologue most excellently, especially Knepp, who spoke beyond any creature I ever, heard.  The play designed to reproach our King with his mistresses, that I was troubled for it, and expected it should be interrupted; but it ended all well, which salved all.  The play a well-writ and good play, only its design I did not like of reproaching the King, but altogether a very good and most serious play.  Thence home, and there a little to the office, and so home to supper, where Mercer with us, and sang, and then to bed.

21st.  At the office all the morning to get a little business done, I having, and so the whole office, been put out of doing any business there for this week by our trouble in attending the Parliament.  Hither comes to me young Captain Beckford, the slopseller, and there presents me a little purse with gold in it, it being, as he told me, for his present to me, at the end of the last year.  I told him I had not done him any service I knew of.  He persisted, and I refused, but did at several denials; and telling him that it was not an age to take presents in, he told me he had reason to present me with something, and desired me to accept of it, which, at his so urging me, I did, and so fell to talk of his business, and so parted.  I do not know of any manner of kindness I have done him this last year, nor did expect any thing.  It was therefore very welcome to me, but yet I was not fully satisfied in my taking it, because of my submitting myself to the having it objected against me hereafter, and the rather because this morning Jacke Fen come and shewed me an order from the Commissioners of Accounts, wherein they demand of him an account upon oath of all the sums of money that have been by him defalked or taken from any man since their time, of enquiry upon any payments, and if this should, as it is to be feared, come to be done to us, I know not what I shall then do, but I shall take counsel upon it.  At noon by coach towards Westminster, and met my Lord Brouncker, and W. Pen, and Sir T. Harvey, in King’s Street, coming away from the Parliament House; and so I to them, and to the French ordinary, at the Blue Bells, in Lincolne’s Inn Fields, and there dined and talked.  And, among other things, they tell me how the House this day is still as backward for giving any money as ever, and do declare they will first have an account of the disposals of the last Poll-bill, and eleven months’ tax:  and it is pretty odde that the very first sum mentioned in the account brought in by Sir Robert Long, of the disposal of the Poll-bill money, is L5000 to my Lord Arlington for intelligence; which was mighty unseasonable, so soon after they had so much cried