le.
Thither came Captain Allen of the Foresight, and the officers of
the yard to see me. Thence by and by to church, by coach, with the
Commissioner, and had a dull sermon. A full church, and some pretty
women in it; among others, Beck Allen, who was a bride-maid to a
new married couple that came to church to-day, and, which was pretty
strange, sat in a pew hung with mourning for a mother of the bride's,
which methinks should have been taken down. After dinner going out of
the church saluted Mrs. Pett, who came after us in the coach to church,
and other officers' wives. The Commissioner staid at dinner with me, and
we had a good dinner, better than I would have had, but I saw there was
no helping of it. After dinner the Commissioner and I left the company
and walked in the garden at the Hill-house, which is very pleasant, and
there talked of our businesses and matters of the navy. So to church
again, where quite weary, and so after sermon walked with him to the
yard up and down and the fields, and saw the place designed for the wet
dock. And so to his house, and had a syllabub, and saw his closet, which
come short of what I expected, but there was fine modells of ships in
it indeed, whose worth I could not judge of. At night walked home to
the Hill-house, Mr. Barrow with me, talking of the faults of the yard,
walking in the fields an hour or two, and so home to supper, and so
Captain Cocke and I to bed. This day among other stories he told me how
despicable a thing it is to be a hangman in Poland, although it be a
place of credit. And that, in his time, there was some repairs to be
made of the gallows there, which was very fine of stone; but nobody
could be got to mend it till the Burgomaster, or Mayor of the town, with
all the companies of those trades which were necessary to be used about
those repairs, did go in their habits with flags, in solemn procession
to the place, and there the Burgomaster did give the first blow with the
hammer upon the wooden work; and the rest of the Masters of the Companys
upon the works belonging to their trades; that so workmen might not be
ashamed to be employed upon doing of the gallows' works.

4th. Up by four o'clock in the morning and walked to the Dock, where
Commissioner Pett and I took barge and went to the guardships and
mustered them, finding them but badly manned; thence to the Sovereign,
which we found kept in good order and very clean, which pleased us
well, but few of the o