that thereupon the Governor
of Dover Castle is getting the victuallers' provision out of the towne
into the Castle to secure it. But I do think this is a ridiculous
conceit; but a little time will show. At night home to supper and to
bed,

30th. Up, and to the office, and mightily troubled all this morning with
going to my Lord Mayor (Sir Thomas Bludworth,

[As his conduct during the Great Fire fully proved, when he is said
to have boasted that he would extinguish the flames by the same
means to which Swift tells us Gulliver had recourse at Lilliput.--B.]

a silly man, I think), and other places, about getting shipped some men
that they have these two last nights pressed in the City out of houses:
the persons wholly unfit for sea, and many of them people of very good
fashion, which is a shame to think of, and carried to Bridewell they
are, yet without being impressed with money legally as they ought to be.
But to see how the King's business is done; my Lord Mayor himself did
scruple at this time of extremity to do this thing, because he had not
money to pay the pressed-money to the men, he told me so himself; nor
to take up boats to carry them down through bridge to the ships I had
prepared to carry them down in; insomuch that I was forced to promise
to be his paymaster, and he did send his City Remembrancer afterwards to
the office, and at the table, in the face of the officers, I did there
out of my owne purse disburse L15 to pay for their pressing and diet
last night and this morning; which is a thing worth record of my Lord
Mayor. Busy about this all the morning, at noon dined and then to the
office again, and all the afternoon till twelve at night full of this
business and others, and among these others about the getting off men
pressed by our officers of the fleete into the service; even our owne
men that are at the office, and the boats that carry us. So that it is
now become impossible to have so much as a letter carried from place to
place, or any message done for us: nay, out of Victualling ships full
loaden to go down to the fleete, and out of the vessels of the officers
of the Ordnance, they press men, so that for want of discipline in this
respect I do fear all will be undone. Vexed with these things, but eased
in mind by my ridding of a great deale of business from the office, I
late home to supper and to bed. But before I was in bed, while I was
undressing myself, our new ugly mayde, Luce