gs, and on other occasions, and at my goldsmith's
did observe the King's new medall, where, in little, there is Mrs.
Steward's face as well done as ever I saw anything in my whole life,
I think: and a pretty thing it is, that he should choose her face
to represent Britannia by. So at the office late very busy and much
business with great joy dispatched, and so home to supper and to bed.

26th. Up, and to the office, where all the morning. And here did receive
another reference from Sir W. Coventry about the business of some of the
Muster-Masters, concerning whom I had returned their small performances,
which do give me a little more trouble for fear [Sir] W. Coventry should
think I had a design to favour my brother Balty, and to that end to
disparage all the rest. But I shall clear all very well, only it do
exercise my thoughts more than I am at leisure for. At home find Balty
and his wife very fine, which I did not like, for fear he do spend too
much of his money that way, and lay [not] up anything. After dinner to
the office again, where by and by Lord Bruncker, [Sir] W. Batten, [Sir]
J. Minnes and I met about receiving Carcasses answers to the depositions
against him. Wherein I did see so much favour from my Lord to him that
I do again begin to see that my Lord is not right at the bottom, and
did make me the more earnest against him, though said little. My Lord
rising, declaring his judgement in his behalf, and going away, I did
hinder our arguing it by ourselves, and so broke up the meeting, and
myself went full of trouble to my office, there to write over the
deposition and his answers side by side, and then home to supper and to
bed with some trouble of mind to think of the issue of this, how it will
breed ill blood among us here.

27th. Up by candle-light, about six o'clock, it being bitter cold
weather again, after all our warm weather, and by water down to Woolwich
rope-yard, I being this day at a leisure, the King and Duke of York
being gone down to Sheerenesse this morning to lay out the design for
a fortification there to the river Medway; and so we do not attend the
Duke of York as we should otherwise have done, and there to the Dock
Yard to enquire of the state of things, and went into Mr. Pett's; and
there, beyond expectation, he did present me with a Japan cane, with a
silver head, and his wife sent me by him a ring, with a Woolwich stone;

[Woolwich stones, still collected in that locality, are si