ly Sir W. Batten, who did
what he did out of common spite to him. So I writ in the margin of the
letter, "Returned as untrue," and, by consent of the Board, did give it
him again, and so parted. Home to dinner, and there came a woman whose
husband I sent for, one Fisher, about the business of Perkins and
Carcasse, and I do think by her I shall find the business as bad as ever
it was, and that we shall find Commissioner Pett a rogue, using foul
play on behalf of Carcasse. After dinner to the office again, and there
late all the afternoon, doing much business, and with great content home
to supper and to bed.

5th (Lord's day). Up, and going down to the water side, I met Sir John
Robinson, and so with him by coach to White Hall, still a vain, prating,
boasting man as any I know, as if the whole City and Kingdom had all
its work done by him. He tells me he hath now got a street ordered to
be continued, forty feet broad, from Paul's through Cannon Street to the
Tower, which will be very fine. He and others this day, where I was in
the afternoon, do tell me of at least six or eight fires within these
few days; and continually stirs of fires, and real fires there have
been, in one place or other, almost ever since the late great fire, as
if there was a fate sent people for fire. I walked over the Park to
Sir W. Coventry's. Among other things to tell him what I hear of people
being forced to sell their bills before September for 35 and 40 per
cent. loss, and what is worst, that there are some courtiers that have
made a knot to buy them, in hopes of some ways to get money of the
King to pay them, which Sir W. Coventry is amazed at, and says we are a
people made up for destruction, and will do what he can to prevent all
this by getting the King to provide wherewith to pay them. We talked
of Tangier, of which he is ashamed; also that it should put the King to
this charge for no good in the world: and now a man going over that is a
good soldier, but a debauched man, which the place need not to have.
And so used these words: "That this place was to the King as my Lord
Carnarvon says of wood, that it is an excrescence of the earth provided
by God for the payment of debts." Thence away to Sir G. Carteret, whom
I find taking physic. I staid talking with him but a little, and so home
to church, and heard a dull sermon, and most of the best women of our
parish gone into the country, or at least not at church. So home, and
find my boy no