ma was a tragi-comedy called 'Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen,'
and an additional interest was attached to its production from the
king having suggested the plot to its author, and calling it 'his
play.'"--Cunningham's Story of Nell Gwyn, ed: 1892, pp. 38,39.]

which is Florimell, that I never can hope ever to see the like done
again, by man or woman. The King and Duke of York were at the play.
But so great performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the
world before as Nell do this, both as a mad girle, then most and best
of all when she comes in like a young gallant; and hath the notions and
carriage of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes
me, I confess, admire her. Thence home and to the office, where busy a
while, and then home to read the lives of Henry 5th and 6th, very fine,
in Speede, and to bed. This day I did pay a bill of L50 from my father,
being so much out of my own purse gone to pay my uncle Robert's legacy
to my aunt Perkins's child.

3rd (Lord's day). Lay long, merrily talking with my wife, and then up
and to church, where a dull sermon of Mr. Mills touching Original Sin,
and then home, and there find little Michell and his wife, whom I love
mightily. Mightily contented I was in their company, for I love her
much; and so after dinner I left them and by water from the Old Swan to
White Hall, where, walking in the galleries, I in the first place met
Mr. Pierce, who tells me the story of Tom Woodall, the surgeon, killed
in a drunken quarrel, and how the Duke of York hath a mind to get him
[Pierce] one of his places in St. Thomas's Hospitall. Then comes Mr.
Hayward, the Duke of York's servant, and tells us that the Swede's
Embassador hath been here to-day with news that it is believed that the
Dutch will yield to have the treaty at London or Dover, neither of which
will get our King any credit, we having already consented to have it at
The Hague; which, it seems, De Witt opposed, as a thing wherein the King
of England must needs have some profound design, which in my conscience
he hath not. They do also tell me that newes is this day come to the
King, that the King of France is come with his army to the frontiers of
Flanders, demanding leave to pass through their country towards Poland,
but is denied, and thereupon that he is gone into the country. How true
this is I dare not believe till I hear more. From them I walked into the
Parke, it being a fine but very c