miles. Returned from Hide Park, I went to my Lord's, and took Will (who
waited for me there) by coach and went home, taking my lute home with
me. It had been all this while since I came from sea at my Lord's for
him to play on. To bed in some pain still. For this month or two it is
not imaginable how busy my head has been, so that I have neglected to
write letters to my uncle Robert in answer to many of his, and to
other friends, nor indeed have I done anything as to my own family, and
especially this month my waiting at the Privy Seal makes me much more
unable to think of anything, because of my constant attendance there
after I have done at the Navy Office. But blessed be God for my good
chance of the Privy Seal, where I get every day I believe about L3. This
place I got by chance, and my Lord did give it me by chance, neither he
nor I thinking it to be of the worth that he and I find it to be. Never
since I was a man in the world was I ever so great a stranger to public
affairs as now I am, having not read a new book or anything like it, or
enquiring after any news, or what the Parliament do, or in any wise how
things go. Many people look after my house in Axe-yard to hire it, so
that I am troubled with them, and I have a mind to get the money to buy
goods for my house at the Navy Office, and yet I am loth to put it off
because that Mr. Man bids me L1000 for my office, which is so great a
sum that I am loth to settle myself at my new house, lest I should take
Mr. Man's offer in case I found my Lord willing to it.

11th. I rose to-day without any pain, which makes me think that my pain
yesterday was nothing but from my drinking too much the day before. To
my Lord this morning, who did give me order to get some things ready
against the afternoon for the Admiralty where he would meet. To the
Privy Seal, and from thence going to my own house in Axeyard, I went
in to Mrs. Crisp's, where I met with Mr. Hartlibb; for whom I wrote a
letter for my Lord to sign for a ship for his brother and sister, who
went away hence this day to Gravesend, and from thence to Holland. I
found by discourse with Mrs. Crisp that he is very jealous of her, for
that she is yet very kind to her old servant Meade. Hence to my Lord's
to dinner with Mr. Sheply, so to the Privy Seal; and at night home, and
then sent for the barber, and was trimmed in the kitchen, the first
time that ever I was so. I was vexed this night that W. Hewer was out of
doors