to my
office, setting business in order, and so to supper and to bed, my mind
being in disorder as to the greatness of this day's business that I have
done, but yet glad that my trouble therein is like to be over.

7th. Up and to my office, whither by agreement Mr. Coventry came
before the time of sitting to confer about preparing an account of the
extraordinary charge of the Navy since the King's coming, more than is
properly to be applied and called the Navy charge. So by and by we sat,
and so till noon. Then home to dinner, and in the afternoon some of us
met again upon something relating to the victualling, and thence to my
writing of letters late, and making my Alphabet to my new Navy book
very pretty. And so after writing to my father by the post about the
endeavour to come to a composition with my uncle, though a very bad one,
desiring him to be contented therewith, I went home to supper and to
bed.

8th (Lord's day). Up, and it being a very great frost, I walked to White
Hall, and to my Lord Sandwich's by the fireside till chapel time, and so
to chappell, where there preached little Dr. Duport, of Cambridge,
upon Josiah's words,--"But I and my house, we will serve the Lord." But
though a great scholler, he made the most flat dead sermon, both for
matter and manner of delivery, that ever I heard, and very long beyond
his hour, which made it worse. Thence with Mr. Creed to the King's Head
ordinary, where we dined well, and after dinner Sir Thomas Willis and
another stranger, and Creed and I, fell a-talking; they of the errours
and corruption of the Navy, and great expence thereof, not knowing who
I was, which at last I did undertake to confute, and disabuse them: and
they took it very well, and I hope it was to good purpose, they being
Parliament-men. By and by to my Lord's, and with him a good while
talking upon his want of money, and ways of his borrowing some, &c.,
and then by other visitants, I withdrew and away, Creed and I and Captn.
Ferrers to the Park, and there walked finely, seeing people slide, we
talking all the while; and Captn. Ferrers telling me, among other Court
passages, how about a month ago, at a ball at Court, a child was dropped
by one of the ladies in dancing, but nobody knew who, it being taken
up by somebody in their handkercher. The next morning all the Ladies
of Honour appeared early at Court for their vindication, so that nobody
could tell whose this mischance should be. But it seems M