But I had my place, and by and by the King comes and the Duke of York; and then the play begins, called “The Sullen Lovers; or, The Impertinents,” having many good humours in it, but the play tedious, and no design at all in it.  But a little boy, for a farce, do dance Polichinelli, the best that ever anything was done in the world, by all men’s report:  most pleased with that, beyond anything in the world, and much beyond all the play.  Thence to the King’s house to see Knepp, but the play done; and so I took a hackney alone, and to the park, and there spent the evening, and to the lodge, and drank new milk.  And so home to the Office, ended my letters, and, to spare my eyes, home, and played on my pipes, and so to bed.

3rd (Lord’s day).  Up, and to church, where I saw Sir A. Rickard, though he be under the Black Rod, by order of the Lords’ House, upon the quarrel between the East India Company and Skinner, which is like to come to a very great heat between the two Houses.  At noon comes Mr. Mills and his wife, and Mr. Turner and his wife, by invitation to dinner, and we were mighty merry, and a very pretty dinner, of my Bridget and Nell’s dressing, very handsome.  After dinner to church again . . . .  So home and with Sir W. Pen took a hackney, and he and I to Old Street, to a brew-house there, to see Sir Thomas Teddiman, who is very ill in bed of a fever, got, I believe, by the fright the Parliament have put him into, of late.  But he is a good man, a good seaman, and stout.  Thence Pen and I to Islington, and there, at the old house, eat, and drank, and merry, and there by chance giving two pretty fat boys each of them a cake, they proved to be Captain Holland’s children, whom therefore I pity.  So round by Hackney home, having good discourse, he [Pen] being very open to me in his talk, how the King ought to dissolve this Parliament, when the Bill of Money is passed, they being never likely to give him more; how he [the King] hath great opportunity of making himself popular by stopping this Act against Conventicles; and how my Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, if the Parliament continue, will undoubtedly fall, he having managed that place with so much self-seeking, and disorder, and pleasure, and some great men are designing to overthrow [him], as, among the rest, my Lord Orrery; and that this will try the King mightily, he being a firm friend to my Lord Lieutenant.  So home; and to supper a little, and then to bed, having stepped, after I come home, to Alderman Backewell’s about business, and there talked a while with him and his wife, a fine woman of the country, and how they had bought an estate at Buckeworth, within four mile of Brampton.