7th (Lord’s day).  Up, and to the office, busy till church time, and then to church, where a dull sermon, and so home to dinner, all alone with my wife, and then to even my Journall to this day, and then to the Tower, to see Sir W. Coventry, who had H. Jermin and a great many more with him, and more, while I was there, come in; so that I do hear that there was not less than sixty coaches there yesterday, and the other day; which I hear also that there is a great exception taken at, by the King and the Duke of Buckingham, but it cannot be helped.  Thence home, and with our coach out to Suffolk Street, to see my cozen Pepys, but neither the old nor young at home.  So to my cozen Turner’s, and there staid talking a little, and then back to Suffolk Street, where they not being yet come home I to White Hall, and there hear that there are letters come from Sir Thomas Allen, that he hath made some kind of peace with Algiers; upon which the King and Duke of York, being to go out of town to-morrow, are met at my Lord Arlington’s:  so I there, and by Mr. Wren was desired to stay to see if there were occasion for their speaking with me, which I did, walking without, with Charles Porter,

[Charles Porter “was the son of a prebend[ary] in Norwich, and a ’prentice boy in the city in the rebellious times.  When the committee house was blown up, he was very active in that rising, and after the soldiers came and dispersed the rout, he, as a rat among joint stools, shifted to and fro among the shambles, and had forty pistols shot at him by the troopers that rode after him to kill him [24th April, 1648].  In that distress he had the presence of mind to catch up a little child that, during the rout, was frighted, and stood crying in the streets, and, unobserved by the troopers, ran away with it.  The people opened a way for him, saying, ’ Make room for the poor child.’  Thus he got off, and while search was made for him in the market-place, got into the Yarmouth ferry, and at Yarmouth took ship and went to Holland . . . .  In Holland he trailed a pike, and was in several actions as a common soldier.  At length he kept a cavalier eating-house; but, his customers being needy, he soon broke, and came for England, and being a genteel youth, was taken in among the chancery clerks, and got to be under a master . . . .  His industry was great; and he had an acquired dexterity and skill in the forms of the court; and although he was a bon companion, and followed much the bottle, yet he made such dispatches as satisfied his clients, especially the clerks, who knew where to find him.  His person was florid, and speech prompt and articulate.  But his vices, in the way of women and the bottle, were so ungoverned, as brought him to a morsel . . . .  When the Lord Keeper North had the Seal, who from an early acquaintance had a kindness for him which was well known, and also that he was well heard, as they call it, business flowed in to him very fast, and yet he could scarce