ed and in the hands of the Receiver and hath been long and
yet not brought up to pay the City, whereas we are coming to borrow 4 or
L500,000 more of the City, which will never be lent as is to be feared.
Church being done, my Lord Bruncker, Sir J. Minnes, and I up to the
Vestry at the desire of the justices of the Peace, Sir Theo. Biddulph
and Sir W. Boreman and Alderman Hooker, in order to the doing something
for the keeping of the plague from growing; but Lord! to consider the
madness of the people of the town, who will (because they are forbid)
come in crowds along with the dead corps to see them buried; but we
agreed on some orders for the prevention thereof. Among other stories,
one was very passionate, methought, of a complaint brought against a
man in the towne for taking a child from London from an infected house.
Alderman Hooker told us it was the child of a very able citizen in
Gracious Street, a saddler, who had buried all the rest of his children
of the plague, and himself and wife now being shut up and in despair of
escaping, did desire only to save the life of this little child; and so
prevailed to have it received stark-naked into the arms of a friend, who
brought it (having put it into new fresh clothes) to Greenwich; where
upon hearing the story, we did agree it should be permitted to be
received and kept in the towne. Thence with my Lord Bruncker to Captain
Cocke's, where we mighty merry and supped, and very late I by water to
Woolwich, in great apprehensions of an ague. Here was my Lord Bruncker's
lady of pleasure, who, I perceive, goes every where with him; and he,
I find, is obliged to carry her, and make all the courtship to her that
can be.

4th. Writing letters all the morning, among others to my Lady Carteret,
the first I have wrote to her, telling her the state of the city as
to health and other sorrowfull stories, and thence after dinner to
Greenwich, to Sir J. Minnes, where I found my Lord Bruncker, and having
staid our hour for the justices by agreement, the time being past we to
walk in the Park with Mr. Hammond and Turner, and there eat some fruit
out of the King's garden and walked in the Parke, and so back to Sir J.
Minnes, and thence walked home, my Lord Bruncker giving me a very neat
cane to walk with; but it troubled me to pass by Coome farme where about
twenty-one people have died of the plague, and three or four days since
I saw a dead corps in a coffin lie in the Close unburied, and