28th (Lord’s day).  Lay long talking with pleasure with my wife, and so up and to the Office with Tom, who looks mighty smug upon his marriage, as Jane also do, both of whom I did give joy, and so Tom and I at work at the Office all the morning, till dinner, and then dined, W. Batelier with us; and so after dinner to work again, and sent for Gibson, and kept him also till eight at night, doing much business.  And so, that being done, and my journal writ, my eyes being very bad, and every day worse and worse, I fear:  but I find it most certain that stronge drinks do make my eyes sore, as they have done heretofore always; for, when I was in the country, when my eyes were at the best, their stronge beere would make my eyes sore:  so home to supper, and by and by to bed.

29th.  Up, and by water to White Hall; and there to the Duke of York, to shew myself, after my journey to Chatham, but did no business to-day with him:  only after gone from him, I to Sir T. Clifford’s; and there, after an hour’s waiting, he being alone in his closet, I did speak with him, and give him the account he gave me to draw up, and he did like it very well:  and then fell to talk of the business of the Navy and giving me good words, did fall foul of the constitution [of the Board], and did then discover his thoughts, that Sir J. Minnes was too old, and so was Colonel Middleton, and that my Lord Brouncker did mind his mathematics too much.  I did not give much encouragement to that of finding fault with my fellow-officers; but did stand up for the constitution, and did say that what faults there were in our Office would be found not to arise from the constitution, but from the failures of the officers in whose hands it was.  This he did seem to give good ear to; but did give me of myself very good words, which pleased me well, though I shall not build upon them any thing.  Thence home; and after dinner by water with Tom down to Greenwich, he reading to me all the way, coming and going, my collections out of the Duke of York’s old manuscript of the Navy, which I have bound up, and do please me mightily.  At Greenwich I come to Captain Cocke’s, where the house full of company, at the burial of James Temple, who, it seems, hath been dead these five days here I had a very good ring, which I did give my wife as soon as I come home.  I spent my time there walking in the garden, talking with James Pierce, who tells me that he is certain that the Duke of Buckingham had been with his wenches all the time that he was absent, which was all the last week, nobody knowing where he was.  The great talk is of the King’s being hot of late against Conventicles, and to see whether the Duke of Buckingham’s being returned will turn the King, which will make him very popular:  and some think it is his plot to make the King thus, to shew his power in the making him change his mind.  But Pierce did tell me that the King did certainly say, that he that took one stone from the Church, did take two from his Crown.