[For note on Mrs. Davenport, who was deceived by a pretended marriage with the Earl of Oxford, see ante.  Lord Oxford’s first wife died in 1659.  He married, in 1672, his second wife, Diana Kirke, of whom nothing more need be said than that she bore an inappropriate Christian name.]

Thence to Tower-wharf, and there took boat, and we all walked to Halfeway House, and there eat and drank, and were pleasant, and so finally home again in the evening, end so good night, this being a very pleasant life that we now lead, and have long done; the Lord be blessed, and make us thankful.  But, though I am much against too much spending, yet I do think it best to enjoy some degree of pleasure now that we have health, money, and opportunity, rather than to leave pleasures to old age or poverty, when we cannot have them so properly.

21st.  My wife and I by water to Westminster, and after she had seen her father (of whom lately I have heard nothing at all what he does or her mother), she comes to me to my Lord’s lodgings, where she and I staid walking in White Hall garden.  And in the Privy-garden saw the finest smocks and linnen petticoats of my Lady Castlemaine’s, laced with rich lace at the bottom, that ever I saw; and did me good to look upon them.  So to Wilkinson’s, she and I and Sarah to dinner, where I had a good quarter of lamb and a salat.  Here Sarah told me how the King dined at my Lady Castlemaine’s, and supped, every day and night the last week; and that the night that the bonfires were made for joy of the Queen’s arrivall, the King was there; but there was no fire at her door, though at all the rest of the doors almost in the street; which was much observed:  and that the King and she did send for a pair of scales and weighed one another; and she, being with child, was said to be heaviest.  But she is now a most disconsolate creature, and comes not out of doors, since the King’s going.  But we went to the Theatre to “The French Dancing Master,” and there with much pleasure gazed upon her (Lady Castlemaine); but it troubles us to see her look dejectedly and slighted by people already.  The play pleased us very well; but Lacy’s part, the Dancing Master, the best in the world.  Thence to my brother Tom’s, in expectation to have met my father to-night come out of the country, but he is not yet come, but here we found my uncle Fenner and his old wife, whom I had not seen since the wedding dinner, nor care to see her.  They being gone, my wife and I went and saw Mrs. Turner, whom we found not well, and her two boys Charles and Will come out of the country, grown very plain boys after three years being under their father’s care in Yorkshire.  Thence to Tom’s again, and there supped well, my she cozen Scott being there and my father being not come, we walked home and to bed.