26th.  Up early.  This being, by God’s great blessing, the fourth solemn day of my cutting for the stone this day four years, and am by God’s mercy in very good health, and like to do well, the Lord’s name be praised for it.  To the office and Sir G. Carteret’s all the morning about business.  At noon come my good guests, Madame Turner, The., and Cozen Norton, and a gentleman, one Mr. Lewin of the King’s Life-Guard; by the same token he told us of one of his fellows killed this morning in a duel.  I had a pretty dinner for them, viz., a brace of stewed carps, six roasted chickens, and a jowl of salmon, hot, for the first course; a tanzy

[Tansy (tanacetum), a herb from which puddings were made.  Hence any pudding of the kind.  Selden ("Table Talk”) says:  “Our tansies at Easter have reference to the bitter herbs.”  See in Wordsworth’s “University Life in the Eighteenth Century” recipes for “an apple tansey,” “a bean tansey,” and “a gooseberry tansey.”—­M.  B.]

and two neats’ tongues, and cheese the second; and were very merry all the afternoon, talking and singing and piping upon the flageolette.  In the evening they went with great pleasure away, and I with great content and my wife walked half an hour in the garden, and so home to supper and to bed.  We had a man-cook to dress dinner to-day, and sent for Jane to help us, and my wife and she agreed at L3 a year (she would not serve under) till both could be better provided, and so she stays with us, and I hope we shall do well if poor Sarah were but rid of her ague.

27th.  Early Sir G. Carteret, both Sir Williams and I by coach to Deptford, it being very windy and rainy weather, taking a codd and some prawnes in Fish Street with us.  We settled to pay the Guernsey, a small ship, but come to a great deal of money, it having been unpaid ever since before the King came in, by which means not only the King pays wages while the ship has lain still, but the poor men have most of them been forced to borrow all the money due for their wages before they receive it, and that at a dear rate, God knows, so that many of them had very little to receive at the table, which grieved me to see it.  To dinner, very merry.  Then Sir George to London, and we again to the pay, and that done by coach home again and to the office, doing some business, and so home and to bed.

28th (Good Friday).  At home all the morning, and dined with my wife, a good dinner.  At my office all the afternoon.  At night to my chamber to read and sing, and so to supper and to bed.

29th.  At the office all the morning.  Then to the Wardrobe, and there coming late dined with the people below.  Then up to my Lady, and staid two hours talking with her about her family business with great content and confidence in me.  So calling at several places I went home, where my people are getting the house clean against to-morrow.  I to the office and wrote several letters by post, and so home and to bed.