, and I mightily pleased with this evening's work, we all parted,
and I took coach and home, where late at my office, and then home
to enter my last three days' Journall; and so to supper and to bed,
troubled at nothing, but that these pleasures do hinder me in my
business, and the more by reason of our being to dine abroad to-morrow,
and then Saturday next is appointed to meet again at my Lord Bruncker's
lodgings, and there to have the whole quire of Italians; but then I do
consider that this is all the pleasure I live for in the world, and the
greatest I can ever expect in the best of my life, and one thing more,
that by hearing this man to-night, and I think Captain Cooke to-morrow,
and the quire of Italians on Saturday, I shall be truly able to
distinguish which of them pleases me truly best, which I do much desire
to know and have good reason and fresh occasion of judging.

13th. Up, and by water to White Hall, where to the Duke of York, and
there did our usual business; but troubled to see that, at this time,
after our declaring a debt to the Parliament of L900,000, and nothing
paid since, but the debt increased, and now the fleete to set out; to
hear that the King hath ordered but L35,000 for the setting out of the
fleete, out of the Poll Bill, to buy all provisions, when five times
as much had been little enough to have done any thing to purpose. They
have, indeed, ordered more for paying off of seamen and the Yards
to some time, but not enough for that neither. Another thing is, the
acquainting the Duke of York with the case of Mr. Lanyon, our agent
at Plymouth, who has trusted us to L8000 out of purse; we are not in
condition, after so many promises, to obtain him a farthing, nor though
a message was carried by Sir G. Carteret and Sir W. Coventry to the
Commissioners for Prizes, that he might have L3000 out of L20,000 worth
of prizes to be shortly sold there, that he might buy at the candle and
pay for the goods out of bills, and all would [not] do any thing, but
that money must go all another way, while the King's service is undone,
and those that trust him perish. These things grieve me to the heart.
The Prince, I hear, is every day better and better. So away by water
home, stopping at Michell's, where Mrs. Martin was, and I there drank
with them and whispered with Betty, who tells me all is well, but was
prevented in something she would have said, her 'marido venant' just
then, a news which did trouble me, a