good time, and thence with a guide post to Chatham, where I
found Sir J. Minnes and Mr. Wayth walking in the garden, whom I told all
this day's news, which I left the town full of, and it is great news,
and will certainly be in the consequence of it. By and by to supper,
and after long discourse, Sir J. Minnes and I, he saw me to my chamber,
which not pleasing me, I sent word so to Mrs. Bradford, that I should be
crowded into such a hole, while the clerks and boarders of her own take
up the best rooms. However I lay there and slept well.

11th. Up early and to the Dock, and with the Storekeeper and other
officers all the morning from one office to another. At noon to
the Hill-house in Commissioner Pett's coach, and after seeing the
guard-ships, to dinner, and after dining done to the Dock by coach, it
raining hard, to see "The Prince" launched, which hath lain in the Dock
in repairing these three years. I went into her and was launched in her.
Thence by boat ashore, it raining, and I went to Mr. Barrow's, where
Sir J. Minnes and Commissioner Pett; we staid long eating sweetmeats
and drinking, and looking over some antiquities of Mr. Barrow's, among
others an old manuscript Almanac, that I believe was made for some
monastery, in parchment, which I could spend much time upon to
understand. Here was a pretty young lady, a niece of Barrow's, which I
took much pleasure to look on. Thence by barge to St. Mary Creek; where
Commissioner Pett (doubtful of the growing greatness of Portsmouth by
the finding of those creeks there), do design a wett dock at no great
charge, and yet no little one; he thinks towards L10,000. And the place,
indeed, is likely to be a very fit place, when the King hath money to do
it with. Thence, it raining as hard as it could pour down, home to the
Hillhouse, and anon to supper, and after supper, Sir J. Minnes and I had
great discourse with Captain Cox and Mr. Hempson about business of
the yard, and particularly of pursers' accounts with Hempson, who is a
cunning knave in that point. So late to bed and, Mr. Wayth being gone, I
lay above in the Treasurer's bed and slept well. About one or two in
the morning the curtains of my bed being drawn waked me, and I saw a man
stand there by the inside of my bed calling me French dogg 20 times, one
after another, and I starting, as if I would get out of the bed, he fell
a-laughing as hard as he could drive, still calling me French dogg, and
laid his hand on my sho