7th.  Up, and to the office, where all the morning.  At noon home to dinner, and thither I sent for Mercer to dine with me, and after dinner she and I called Mrs. Turner, and I carried them to the Duke of York’s house, and there saw “The Man’s the Master,” which proves, upon my seeing it again, a very good play.  Thence called Knepp from the King’s house, where going in for her, the play being done, I did see Beck Marshall come dressed, off of the stage, and looks mighty fine, and pretty, and noble:  and also Nell, in her boy’s clothes, mighty pretty.  But, Lord! their confidence! and how many men do hover about them as soon as they come off the stage, and how confident they are in their talk!  Here I did kiss the pretty woman newly come, called Pegg, that was Sir Charles Sidly’s mistress, a mighty pretty woman, and seems, but is not, modest.  Here took up Knepp into our coach, and all of us with her to her lodgings, and thither comes Bannister with a song of hers, that he hath set in Sir Charles Sidly’s play for her, which is, I think, but very meanly set; but this he did, before us, teach her, and it being but a slight, silly, short ayre, she learnt it presently.  But I did get him to prick me down the notes of the Echo in “The Tempest,” which pleases me mightily.  Here was also Haynes, the incomparable dancer of the King’s house, and a seeming civil man, and sings pretty well, and they gone, we abroad to Marrowbone, and there walked in the garden, the first time I ever was there; and a pretty place it is, and here we eat and drank and stayed till 9 at night, and so home by moonshine . . . .  And so set Mrs. Knepp at her lodging, and so the rest, and I home talking with a great deal of pleasure, and so home to bed.

8th.  Up, and to the office, where busy all the morning.  Towards noon I to Westminster and there understand that the Lords’ House did sit till eleven o’clock last night, about the business in difference between them and the Commons, in the matter of the East India Company.  Here took a turn or two, and up to my Lord Crew’s, and there dined; where Mr. Case, the minister, a dull fellow in his talk, and all in the Presbyterian manner; a great deal of noise and a kind of religious tone, but very dull.  After dinner my Lord and I together.  He tells me he hears that there are great disputes like to be at Court, between the factions of the two women, my Lady Castlemayne and Mrs. Stewart, who is now well again, and the King hath made several public visits to her, and like to come to Court:  the other is to go to Barkeshire-house, which is taken for her, and they say a Privy-Seal is passed for L5000 for it.  He believes all will come to ruin.  Thence I to White Hall, where the Duke of York gone to the Lords’ House, where there is to be a conference on the Lords’ side to the Commons this afternoon, giving in their Reasons, which I would have been at, but could not; for, going by direction to the Prince’s chamber, there Brouncker, W.