to ruin again.  So he and I to the Wardrobe to dinner, and after dinner Captain Ferrers and I to the Opera, and saw “The Witts” again, which I like exceedingly.  The Queen of Bohemia was here, brought by my Lord Craven.  So the Captain and I and another to the Devil tavern and drank, and so by coach home.  Troubled in mind that I cannot bring myself to mind my business, but to be so much in love of plays.  We have been at a great loss a great while for a vessel that I sent about a month ago with, things of my Lord’s to Lynn, and cannot till now hear of them, but now we are told that they are put into Soale Bay, but to what purpose I know not.

18th (Lord’s day).  To our own church in the morning and so home to dinner, where my father and Dr. Tom Pepys came to me to dine, and were very merry.  After dinner I took my wife and Mr. Sidney to my Lady to see my Lord Hinchingbroke, who is now pretty well again, and sits up and walks about his chamber.  So I went to White Hall, and there hear that my Lord General Monk continues very ill:  so I went to la belle Pierce and sat with her; and then to walk in St. James’s Park, and saw great variety of fowl which I never saw before and so home.  At night fell to read in “Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity,” which Mr. Moore did give me last Wednesday very handsomely bound; and which I shall read with great pains and love for his sake.  So to supper and to bed.

19th.  At the office all the morning; at noon the children are sent for by their mother my Lady Sandwich to dinner, and my wife goes along with them by coach, and she to my father’s and dines there, and from thence with them to see Mrs. Cordery, who do invite them before my father goes into the country, and thither I should have gone too but that I am sent for to the Privy Seal, and there I found a thing of my Lord Chancellor’s

[This “thing” was probably one of those large grants which Clarendon quietly, or, as he himself says, “without noise or scandal,” procured from the king.  Besides lands and manors, Clarendon states at one time that the king gave him a “little billet into his hand, that contained a warrant of his own hand-writing to Sir Stephen Fox to pay to the Chancellor the sum of L20,000,—­[approximately 10 million dollars in the year 2000]—­of which nobody could have notice.”  In 1662 he received L5,000 out of the money voted to the king by the Parliament of Ireland, as he mentions in his vindication of himself against the impeachment of the Commons; and we shall see that Pepys, in February, 1664, names another sum of L20,000 given to the Chancellor to clear the mortgage upon Clarendon Park; and this last sum, it was believed, was paid from the money received from France by the sale of Dunkirk.—­B.]

to be sealed this afternoon, and so I am forced to go to Worcester House, where severall Lords are met in Council this afternoon.  And while I am waiting there, in comes the King in a plain common riding-suit