for new voyages, when we have not paid them
half of what we owe them for their old services! I did write so to Sir
W. Coventry this night. At night my wife and I to walk and talk
again about our gold, which I am not quiet in my mind to be safe, and
therefore will think of some way to remove it, it troubling me very
much. So home with my wife to supper and to bed, miserable hot weather
all night it was.
21st. Up and by water to White Hall, there to discourse with [Sir] G.
Carteret and Mr. Fenn about office business. I found them all aground,
and no money to do anything with. Thence homewards, calling at my
Tailor's to bespeak some coloured clothes, and thence to Hercules
Pillars, all alone, and there spent 6d. on myself, and so home and
busy all the morning. At noon to dinner, home, where my wife shows me a
letter from her father, who is going over sea, and this afternoon would
take his leave of her. I sent him by her three Jacobuses in gold,
having real pity for him and her. So I to my office, and there all the
afternoon. This day comes news from Harwich that the Dutch fleete are
all in sight, near 100 sail great and small, they think, coming towards
them; where, they think, they shall be able to oppose them; but do cry
out of the falling back of the seamen, few standing by them, and those
with much faintness. The like they write from Portsmouth, and their
letters this post are worth reading. Sir H. Cholmly come to me this day,
and tells me the Court is as mad as ever; and that the night the Dutch
burned our ships the King did sup with my Lady Castlemayne, at the
Duchess of Monmouth's, and there were all mad in hunting of a poor moth.
All the Court afraid of a Parliament; but he thinks nothing can save us
but the King's giving up all to a Parliament. Busy at the office all
the afternoon, and did much business to my great content. In the evening
sent for home, and there I find my Lady Pen and Mrs. Lowther, and Mrs.
Turner and my wife eating some victuals, and there I sat and laughed
with them a little, and so to the office again, and in the evening
walked with my wife in the garden, and did give Sir W. Pen at his
lodgings (being just come from Deptford from attending the dispatch of
the fire-ships there) an account of what passed the other day at Council
touching Commissioner Pett, and so home to supper and to bed.
22nd. Up, and to my office, where busy, and there comes Mrs. Daniel...
At the office I all the morning
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