["Fox, or some other ‘weighty’ friend, on hearing of this, complained to Monk, who issued the following order, dated March 9th:  ’I do require all officers and soldiers to forbear to disturb peaceable meetings of the Quakers, they doing nothing prejudicial to the Parliament or the Commonwealth of England.  George Monk.’  This order, we are told, had an excellent effect on the soldiers.”—­A.  C. Bickley’s ’George Fox and the Early Quakers, London, 1884, p. 179.  The Quakers were at this time just coming into notice.  The first preaching of George Fox, the founder, was in 1648, and in 1655 the preachers of the sect numbered seventy-three.  Fox computed that there were seldom less than a thousand quakers in prison.  The statute 13 and 14 Car.  II. cap. i. (1662) was “An act for preventing the mischiefs and dangers that may arise by certain persons called quakers and others, refusing to take lawful oaths.”  Billing is mentioned again on July 22nd, 1667, when he addressed Pepys in Westminster Hall.]

So after drinking with Mr. Spicer, who had received L600 for me this morning, I went to Capt.  Stone and with him by coach to the Temple Gardens (all the way talking of the disease of the stone), where we met Mr. Squib, but would do nothing till to-morrow morning.  Thence back on foot home, where I found a letter from my Lord in character [private cryptic code Ed.], which I construed, and after my wife had shewn me some ribbon and shoes that she had taken out of a box of Mr. Montagu’s which formerly Mr. Kipps had left here when his master was at sea, I went to Mr. Crew and advised with him about it, it being concerning my Lord’s coming up to Town, which he desires upon my advice the last week in my letter.  Thence calling upon Mrs. Ann I went home, and wrote in character to my Lord in answer to his letter.  This day Mr. Crew told me that my Lord St. John is for a free Parliament, and that he is very great with Monk, who hath now the absolute command and power to do any thing that he hath a mind to do.  Mr. Moore told me of a picture hung up at the Exchange of a great pair of buttocks shooting of a turd into Lawson’s mouth, and over it was wrote “The thanks of the house.”  Boys do now cry “Kiss my Parliament, instead of “Kiss my [rump],” so great and general a contempt is the Rump come to among all the good and bad.

8th.  A little practice on my flageolet, and afterwards walking in my yard to see my stock of pigeons, which begin now with the spring to breed very fast.  I was called on by Mr. Fossan, my fellow pupil at Cambridge, and I took him to the Swan in the Palace yard, and drank together our morning draft.  Thence to my office, where I received money, and afterwards Mr. Carter, my old friend at Cambridge, meeting me as I was going out of my office I took him to the Swan, and in the way I met with Captain Lidcott, and so we three went together and drank there, the Captain talking as high as ever he did, and more because of the fall of his brother Thurlow.