! how some poor women did cry; and in my life
I never did see such natural expression of passion as I did here in some
women's bewailing themselves, and running to every parcel of men that
were brought, one after another, to look for their husbands, and wept
over every vessel that went off, thinking they might be there, and
looking after the ship as far as ever they could by moone-light, that
it grieved me to the heart to hear them. Besides, to see poor patient
labouring men and housekeepers, leaving poor wives and families,
taking up on a sudden by strangers, was very hard, and that without
press-money, but forced against all law to be gone. It is a great
tyranny. Having done this I to the Lieutenant of the Tower and bade him
good night, and so away home and to bed.

2nd. Up betimes, and forced to go to my Lord Mayor's, about the business
of the pressed men; and indeed I find him a mean man of understanding
and dispatch of any publique business. Thence out of curiosity to
Bridewell to see the pressed men, where there are about 300; but so
unruly that I durst not go among them: and they have reason to be so,
having been kept these three days prisoners, with little or no
victuals, and pressed out, and, contrary to all course of law, without
press-money, and men that are not liable to it. Here I met with prating
Colonel Cox, one of the City collonells heretofore a great presbyter:
but to hear how the fellow did commend himself, and the service he do
the King; and, like an asse, at Paul's did take me out of my way on
purpose to show me the gate (the little north gate) where he had two men
shot close by him on each hand, and his own hair burnt by a bullet-shot
in the insurrection of Venner, and himself escaped. Thence home and to
the Tower to see the men from Bridewell shipped. Being rid of him I home
to dinner, and thence to the Excise office by appointment to meet my
Lord Bellasses and the Commissioners, which we did and soon dispatched,
and so I home, and there was called by Pegg Pen to her house, where her
father and mother, and Mrs. Norton, the second Roxalana, a fine woman,
indifferent handsome, good body and hand, and good mine, and pretends to
sing, but do it not excellently. However I took pleasure there, and my
wife was sent for, and Creed come in to us, and so there we spent the
most of the afternoon. Thence weary of losing so much time I to the
office, and thence presently down to Deptford; but to see what a
con