usiness, and then home to
the 'Change, where also I did some business, and went off and ended my
contract with the "Kingfisher" I hired for Tangier, and I hope to get
something by it. Thence home to dinner, and visited Sir W. Batten, who
is sick again, worse than he was, and I am apt to think is very ill. So
to my office, and among other things with Sir W. Warren 4 hours or more
till very late, talking of one thing or another, and have concluded a
firm league with him in all just ways to serve him and myself all I can,
and I think he will be a most usefull and thankfull man to me. So home
to supper and to bed. This being one of the coldest days, all say,
they ever felt in England; and I this day, under great apprehensions
of getting an ague from my putting a suit on that hath lain by without
ayring a great while, and I pray God it do not do me hurte.

7th. Up and to my office, where busy all the morning, and at home to
dinner. It being Shrove Tuesday, had some very good fritters. All the
afternoon and evening at the office, and at night home to supper and to
bed. This day, Sir W. Batten, who hath been sicke four or five days, is
now very bad, so as people begin to fear his death; and I am at a loss
whether it will be better for me to have him die, because he is a bad
man, or live, for fear a worse should come.

8th. Up and by coach to my Lord Peterborough's, where anon my Lord Ashly
and Sir Thomas Ingram met, and Povy about his accounts, who is one of
the most unhappy accountants that ever I knew in all my life, and one
that if I were clear in reference to my bill of L117 he should be hanged
before I would ever have to do with him, and as he understands nothing
of his business himself, so he hath not one about him that do. Here late
till I was weary, having business elsewhere, and thence home by coach,
and after dinner did several businesses and very late at my office, and
so home to supper and to bed.

9th. Up and to my office, where all the morning very busy. At noon home
to dinner, and then to my office again, where Sir William Petty come,
among other things to tell me that Mr. Barlow

[Thomas Barlow, Pepys's predecessor as Clerk of the Acts, to whom he
paid part of the salary. Barlow held the office jointly with Dennis
Fleeting.]

is dead; for which, God knows my heart, I could be as sorry as is
possible for one to be for a stranger, by whose death he gets L100 per
annum, he being a worthy, hone