that my
dinner was great, and most neatly dressed by our own only maid. We had a
fricasee of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton boiled, three carps
in a dish, a great dish of a side of lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, a
dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie (a most rare pie),
a dish of anchovies, good wine of several sorts, and all things mighty
noble and to my great content. After dinner to Hide Park; my aunt,
Mrs. Wight and I in one coach, and all the rest of the women in Mrs.
Turner's; Roger being gone in haste to the Parliament about the carrying
this business of the Papists, in which it seems there is great contest
on both sides, and my uncle and father staying together behind. At
the Park was the King, and in another coach my Lady Castlemaine, they
greeting one another at every tour.

[The company drove round and round the Ring in Hyde Park. The
following two extracts illustrate this, and the second one shows
how the circuit was called the Tour: "Here (1697) the people of
fashion take the diversion of the Ring. In a pretty high place,
which lies very open, they have surrounded a circumference of two or
three hundred paces diameter with a sorry kind of balustrade, or
rather with postes placed upon stakes but three feet from the
ground; and the coaches drive round this. When they have turned for
some time round one way they face about and turn t'other: so rowls
the world!"--Wilson's Memoirs, 1719, p. 126.]

["It is in this Park where the Grand Tour or Ring is kept for the
Ladies to take the air in their coaches, and in fine weather I have
seen above three hundred at a time."--[Macky's] Journey through
England, 1724, vol. i., p. 75.]

Here about an hour, and so leaving all by the way we home and found
the house as clean as if nothing had been done there to-day from top to
bottom, which made us give the cook 12d. a piece, each of us. So to
my office about writing letters by the post, one to my brother John at
Brampton telling him (hoping to work a good effect by it upon my mother)
how melancholy my father is, and bidding him use all means to get my
mother to live peaceably and quietly, which I am sure she neither do nor
I fear can ever do, but frightening her with his coming down no more,
and the danger of her condition if he should die I trust may do good. So
home and to bed.

5th (Lord's day). Up and spent the morning, till