[Dr. William Bates, one of the most eminent of the Puritan divines, and who took part in the Savoy Conference.  His collected writings were published in 1700, and fill a large folio volume.  The Dissenters called him silver-tongued Bates.  Calamy affirmed that if Bates would have conformed to the Established Church he might have been raised to any bishopric in the kingdom.  He died in 1699, aged seventy-four.]

From thence we all took coach, and to our office, and there sat till it was late; and so I home and to bed by day-light.  This day was kept a holy-day through the town; and it pleased me to see the little boys walk up and down in procession with their broom-staffs in their hands, as I had myself long ago gone.

[Pepys here refers to the perambulation of parishes on Holy Thursday, still observed.  This ceremony was sometimes enlivened by whipping the boys, for the better impressing on their minds the remembrance of the day, and the boundaries of the parish, instead of beating houses or stones.  But this would not have harmonized well with the excellent Hooker’s practice on this day, when he “always dropped some loving and facetious observations, to be remembered against the next year, especially by the boys and young people.”  Amongst Dorsetshire customs, it seems that, in perambulating a manor or parish, a boy is tossed into a stream, if that be the boundary; if a hedge, a sapling from it is applied for the purpose of flagellation.—­B.]

24th.  At home all the morning making up my private accounts, and this is the first time that I do find myself to be clearly worth L500 in money, besides all my goods in my house, &c.  In the afternoon at the office late, and then I went to the Wardrobe, where I found my Lord at supper, and therefore I walked a good while till he had done, and I went in to him, and there he looked over my accounts.  And they were committed to Mr. Moore to see me paid what remained due to me.  Then down to the kitchen to eat a bit of bread and butter, which I did, and there I took one of the maids by the chin, thinking her to be Susan, but it proved to be her sister, who is very like her.  From thence home.

25th.  All the morning at home about business.  At noon to the Temple, where I staid and looked over a book or two at Playford’s, and then to the Theatre, where I saw a piece of “The Silent Woman,” which pleased me.  So homewards, and in my way bought “The Bondman” in Paul’s Churchyard, and so home, where I found all clean, and the hearth and range, as it is now enlarged, set up, which pleases me very much.