17th (Lord’s day).  Up, and put on my new stuff-suit, with a shoulder-belt, according to the new fashion, and the bands of my vest and tunique laced with silk lace, of the colour of my suit:  and so, very handsome, to Church, where a dull sermon and of a stranger, and so home; and there I find W. Howe, and a younger brother of his, come to dine with me; and there comes Mercer, and brings with her Mrs. Gayet, which pleased me mightily; and here was also W. Hewer, and mighty merry; and after dinner to sing psalms.  But, Lord! to hear what an excellent base this younger brother of W. Howe’s sings, even to my astonishment, and mighty pleasant.  By and by Gayet goes away, being a Catholick, to her devotions, and Mercer to church; but we continuing an hour or two singing, and so parted; and I to Sir W. Pen’s, and there sent for a hackney-coach; and he and she [Lady Pen] and I out, to take the gyre.  We went to Stepney, and there stopped at the Trinity House, he to talk with the servants there against to-morrow, which is a great day for the choice of a new Master, and thence to Mile End, and there eat and drank, and so home; and I supped with them—­that is, eat some butter and radishes, which is my excuse for not eating any other of their victuals, which I hate, because of their sluttery:  and so home, and made my boy read to me part of Dr. Wilkins’s new book of the “Real Character;” and so to bed.

18th.  Up, and to my office, where most of the morning doing business and seeing my window-frames new painted, and then I out by coach to my Lord Bellasses, at his new house by my late Lord Treasurer’s, and there met him and Mr. Sherwin, Auditor Beale, and Creed, about my Lord’s accounts, and here my Lord shewed me his new house, which, indeed, is mighty noble, and good pictures—­indeed, not one bad one in it.  Thence to my tailor’s, and there did find Mercer come with Mrs. Horsfield and Gayet according to my desire, and there I took them up, it being almost twelve o’clock, or a little more, and carried them to the King’s playhouse, where the doors were not then open; but presently they did open; and we in, and find many people already come in, by private ways, into the pit, it being the first day of Sir Charles Sidly’s new play, so long expected, “The Mullberry Guarden,” of whom, being so reputed a wit, all the world do expect great matters.  I having sat here awhile, and eat nothing to-day, did slip out, getting a boy to keep my place; and to the Rose Tavern, and there got half a breast of mutton, off of the spit, and dined all alone.  And so to the play again, where the King and Queen, by and by, come, and all the Court; and the house infinitely full.  But the play, when it come, though there was, here and there, a pretty saying, and that not very many neither, yet the whole of the play had nothing extraordinary in it, at all, neither of language nor design; insomuch that the King I did not see laugh, nor pleased the whole play from the beginning to the end, nor the company;