per and sent it away by an Expresse. Then comes
my wife, and I set her to get supper ready against I go to the Duke of
Albemarle and back again; and at the Duke's with great joy I received
the good news of the decrease of the plague this week to 70, and but 253
in all; which is the least Bill hath been known these twenty years in
the City. Through the want of people in London is it, that must make
it so low below the ordinary number for Bills. So home, and find all my
good company I had bespoke, as Coleman and his wife, and Laneare, Knipp
and her surly husband; and good musique we had, and, among other things,
Mrs. Coleman sang my words I set of "Beauty retire," and I think it is a
good song, and they praise it mightily. Then to dancing and supper, and
mighty merry till Mr. Rolt come in, whose pain of the tooth-ake made him
no company, and spoilt ours; so he away, and then my wife's teeth fell
of akeing, and she to bed. So forced to break up all with a good song,
and so to bed.

4th. Up, and to the office, where my Lord Bruncker and I, against Sir W.
Batten and Sir J. Minnes and the whole table, for Sir W. Warren in the
business of his mast contract, and overcome them and got them to do what
I had a mind to, for indeed my Lord being unconcerned in what I aimed
at. So home to dinner, where Mr. Sheldon come by invitation from
Woolwich, and as merry as I could be with all my thoughts about me and
my wife still in pain of her tooth. He anon took leave and took Mrs.
Barbary his niece home with him, and seems very thankful to me for the
L10 I did give him for my wife's rent of his house, and I am sure I am
beholding to him, for it was a great convenience to me, and then my wife
home to London by water and I to the office till 8 at night, and so
to my Lord Bruncker's, thinking to have been merry, having appointed
a meeting for Sir J. Minnes and his company and Mrs. Knipp again,
but whatever hindered I know not, but no company come, which vexed me
because it disappointed me of the glut of mirthe I hoped for. However,
good discourse with my Lord and merry, with Mrs. Williams's descants
upon Sir J. Minnes's and Mrs. Turner's not coming. So home and to bed.

5th. I with my Lord Bruncker and Mrs. Williams by coach with four horses
to London, to my Lord's house in Covent-Guarden. But, Lord! what staring
to see a nobleman's coach come to town. And porters every where bow to
us; and such begging of beggars! And a delightfull thing it