s means an opportunity of getting him 30 or 40s. Having
set him a doing, I home and to the office very late, very busy, and did
indeed dispatch much business, and so to supper and to bed. After a song
in the garden, which, and after dinner, is now the greatest pleasure I
take, and indeed do please me mightily, to bed, after washing my legs
and feet with warm water in my kitchen. This evening I had Davila

[Enrico Caterino Davila (1576-1631) was one of the chief historical
writers of Italy, and his "Storia delle guerre civili di Francia"
covers a period of forty years, from the death of Henri II. to the
Peace of Vervins in 1598.]

brought home to me, and find it a most excellent history as ever I read.

15th (Lord's day). Up, and to church, where our lecturer made a sorry
silly sermon, upon the great point of proving the truth of the Christian
religion. Home and had a good dinner, expecting Mr. Hunt, but there
comes only young Michell and his wife, whom my wife concurs with me to
be a pretty woman, and with her husband is a pretty innocent couple.
Mightily pleasant we were, and I mightily pleased in her company and
to find my wife so well pleased with them also. After dinner he and I
walked to White Hall, not being able to get a coach. He to the Abbey,
and I to White Hall, but met with nobody to discourse with, having
no great mind to be found idling there, and be asked questions of the
fleete, so walked only through to the Parke, and there, it being mighty
hot and I weary, lay down by the canaille, upon the grasse, and slept
awhile, and was thinking of a lampoone which hath run in my head this
weeke, to make upon the late fight at sea, and the miscarriages there;
but other businesses put it out of my head. Having lain there a while, I
then to the Abbey and there called Michell, and so walked in great pain,
having new shoes on, as far as Fleete Streete and there got a coach, and
so in some little ease home and there drank a great deale of small beer;
and so took up my wife and Betty Michell and her husband, and away
into the fields, to take the ayre, as far as beyond Hackny, and so back
again, in our way drinking a great deale of milke, which I drank to take
away, my heartburne, wherewith I have of late been mightily troubled,
but all the way home I did break abundance of wind behind, which did
presage no good but a great deal of cold gotten. So home and supped and
away went Michell and his wife, of