the balance of Mr. Creed.  I dined with my Lady and my Lady Pickering, where her son John dined with us, who do continue a fool as he ever was since I knew him.  His mother would fain marry him to get a portion for his sister Betty but he will not hear of it.  Hither came Major Hart this noon, who tells me that the Regiment is now disbanded, and that there is some money coming to me for it.  I took him to my Lord to Mr. Crew’s, and from thence with Mr. Shepley and Mr. Moore to the Devil Tavern, and there we drank.  So home and wrote letters by the post.  Then to my lyra viall,

[The lyre viol is a viol with extra open bass strings, holding the same relation to the viol as the theorbo does to the lute.  A volume entitled “Musick’s Recreation on the Lyra Viol,” was printed by John Playford in 1650.]

and to bed.

18th (Lord’s day).  In the morning to our own church, Where Mr. Powel (a crook legged man that went formerly with me to Paul’s School), preached a good sermon.  In the afternoon to our own church and my wife with me (the first time that she and my Lady Batten came to sit in our new pew), and after sermon my Lady took us home and there we supped with her and Sir W. Batten, and Pen, and were much made of.  The first time that ever my wife was there.  So home and to bed.

19th (Office day).  After we had done a little at the office this morning, I went with the Treasurer in his coach to White Hall, and in our way, in discourse, do find him a very good-natured man; and, talking of those men who now stand condemned for murdering the King, he says that he believes that, if the law would give leave, the King is a man of so great compassion that he would wholly acquit them.  Going to my Lord’s I met with Mr. Shepley, and so he and I to the Sun, and I did give him a morning draft of Muscadine.

[Muscadine or muscadel, a rich sort of wine.  ’Vinum muscatum quod
moschi odorem referat.’

              “Quaffed off the muscadel, and threw the sops
               All in the sexton’s face.”

Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, act iii.  SC. 2.—­M.  B.]

And so to see my Lord’s picture at De Cretz, and he says it is very like him, and I say so too.  After that to Westminster Hall, and there hearing that Sir W. Batten was at the Leg in the Palace, I went thither, and there dined with him and some of the Trinity House men who had obtained something to-day at the House of Lords concerning the Ballast Office.  After dinner I went by water to London to the Globe in Cornhill, and there did choose two pictures to hang up in my house, which my wife did not like when I came home, and so I sent the picture of Paris back again.  To the office, where we sat all the afternoon till night.  So home, and there came Mr. Beauchamp to me with the gilt tankard, and I did pay him for it L20.  So to my musique and sat up late at it, and so to bed, leaving my wife to sit up till 2 o’clock that she may call the wench up to wash.