6th (Twelfth Day).  Up and Mr. Creed brought a pot of chocolate ready made for our morning draft, and then he and I to the Duke’s, but I was not very willing to be seen at this end of the town, and so returned to our lodgings, and took my wife by coach to my brother’s, where I set her down, and Creed and I to St. Paul’s Church-yard, to my bookseller’s, and looked over several books with good discourse, and then into St. Paul’s Church, and there finding Elborough, my old schoolfellow at Paul’s, now a parson, whom I know to be a silly fellow, I took him out and walked with him, making Creed and myself sport with talking with him, and so sent him away, and we to my office and house to see all well, and thence to the Exchange, where we met with Major Thomson, formerly of our office, who do talk very highly of liberty of conscience, which now he hopes for by the King’s declaration, and that he doubts not that if he will give him, he will find more and better friends than the Bishopps can be to him, and that if he do not, there will many thousands in a little time go out of England, where they may have it.  But he says that they are well contented that if the King thinks it good, the Papists may have the same liberty with them.  He tells me, and so do others, that Dr. Calamy is this day sent to Newgate for preaching, Sunday was se’nnight, without leave, though he did it only to supply the place; when otherwise the people must have gone away without ever a sermon, they being disappointed of a minister but the Bishop of London will not take that as an excuse.  Thence into Wood Street, and there bought a fine table for my dining-room, cost me 50s.; and while we were buying it, there was a scare-fire

[Scar-fire or scarefire.  An alarm of fire.  One of the little pieces in Herrick’s “Hesperides” is entitled “The Scar-fire,” but the word sometimes was used, as in the text, for the fire itself.  Fuller, in his “Worthies,” speaks of quenching scare-fires.]

in an ally over against us, but they quenched it.  So to my brother’s, where Creed and I and my wife dined with Tom, and after dinner to the Duke’s house, and there saw “Twelfth Night”

     [Pepys saw “Twelfth Night” for the first time on September 11th,
     1661, when he supposed it was a new play, and “took no pleasure at
     all in it.”]

acted well, though it be but a silly play, and not related at all to the name or day.  Thence Mr. Battersby the apothecary, his wife, and I and mine by coach together, and setting him down at his house, he paying his share, my wife and I home, and found all well, only myself somewhat vexed at my wife’s neglect in leaving of her scarf, waistcoat, and night-dressings in the coach today that brought us from Westminster, though, I confess, she did give them to me to look after, yet it was her fault not to see that I did take them out of the coach.  I believe it might be as good as 25s. loss or thereabouts.  So to