e them again, and in the
meantime to have half-pay. This is said. Thence home to dinner, and so
to my office all the afternoon. In the evening my wife and Sir W. Warren
with me to White Hall, sending her with the coach to see her father and
mother. He and I up to Sir G. Carteret, and first I alone and then both
had discourse with him about things of the Navy, and so I and he calling
my wife at Unthanke's, home again, and long together talking how to
order things in a new contract for Norway goods, as well to the King's
as to his advantage. He gone, I to my monthly accounts, and, bless God!
I find I have increased my last balance, though but little; but I hope
ere long to get more. In the meantime praise God for what I have, which
is L1209. So, with my heart glad to see my accounts fall so right in
this time of mixing of monies and confusion, I home to bed.

DECEMBER 1664

December 1st. Up betimes and to White Hall to a Committee of Tangier,
and so straight home and hard to my business at my office till noon,
then to dinner, and so to my office, and by and by we sat all the
afternoon, then to my office again till past one in the morning, and so
home to supper and to bed.

2nd. Lay long in bed. Then up and to the office, where busy all the
morning. At home dined. After dinner with my wife and Mercer to the
Duke's House, and there saw "The Rivalls," which I had seen before; but
the play not good, nor anything but the good actings of Betterton and
his wife and Harris. Thence homeward, and the coach broke with us in
Lincoln's Inn Fields, and so walked to Fleete Streete, and there took
coach and home, and to my office, whither by and by comes Captain Cocke,
and then Sir W. Batten, and we all to Sir J. Minnes, and I did give
them a barrel of oysters I had given to me, and so there sat and talked,
where good discourse of the late troubles, they knowing things, all
of them, very well; and Cocke, from the King's own mouth, being then
entrusted himself much, do know particularly that the King's credulity
to Cromwell's promises, private to him, against the advice of his
friends and the certain discovery of the practices and discourses of
Cromwell in council (by Major Huntington)

[According to Clarendon the officer here alluded to was a major in
Cromwell's own regiment of horse, and employed by him to treat with
Charles I. whilst at Hampton Court; but being convinced of the
insincerity of the proceedin