ness, that I might have talked with
her, but she came not. So I to White Hall by coach with Mr. Andrews,
and there I got his contract for the victualling of Tangier signed and
sealed by us there, so that all the business is well over, and I hope
to have made a good business of it and to receive L100 by it the next
weeke, for which God be praised! Thence to W. Joyce's and Anthony's, to
invite them to dinner to meet my aunt James at my house, and the rather
because they are all to go down to my father the next weeke, and so I
would be a little kind to them before they go. So home, having called
upon Doll, our pretty 'Change woman, for a pair of gloves trimmed with
yellow ribbon, to [match the] petticoate my wife bought yesterday, which
cost me 20s.; but she is so pretty, that, God forgive me! I could not
think it too much--which is a strange slavery that I stand in to beauty,
that I value nothing near it. So going home, and my coach stopping in
Newgate Market over against a poulterer's shop, I took occasion to buy
a rabbit, but it proved a deadly old one when I came to eat it, as I did
do after an hour being at my office, and after supper again there till
past 11 at night. So home,, and to bed. This day Mr. Coventry did tell
us how the Duke did receive the Dutch Embassador the other day; by
telling him that, whereas they think us in jest, he believes that the
Prince (Rupert) which goes in this fleete to Guinny will soon tell them
that we are in earnest, and that he himself will do the like here, in
the head of the fleete here at home, and that for the meschants, which
he told the Duke there were in England, which did hope to do themselves
good by the King's being at warr, says he, the English have ever united
all this private difference to attend foraigne, and that Cromwell,
notwithstanding the meschants in his time, which were the Cavaliers, did
never find them interrupt him in his foraigne businesses, and that he
did not doubt but to live to see the Dutch as fearfull of provoking the
English, under the government of a King, as he remembers them to have
been under that of a Coquin. I writ all this story to my Lord Sandwich
tonight into the Downes, it being very good and true, word for word from
Mr. Coventry to-day.

7th. Lay long to-day, pleasantly discoursing with my wife about the
dinner we are to have for the Joyces, a day or two hence. Then up and
with Mr. Margetts to Limehouse to see his ground and ropeyarde there,