himself with two privateers of the Prince's, and so we study how to ease
or secure ourselves. So to walk in the garden with my wife, and then to
supper and to bed. One tells me that, by letter from Holland, the people
there are made to believe that our condition in England is such as they
may have whatever they will ask; and that so they are mighty high, and
despise us, or a peace with us; and there is too much reason for them
to do so. The Dutch fleete are in great squadrons everywhere still about
Harwich, and were lately at Portsmouth; and the last letters say at
Plymouth, and now gone to Dartmouth to destroy our Streights' fleete
lately got in thither; but God knows whether they can do it any hurt,
or no, but it was pretty news come the other day so fast, of the Dutch
fleets being in so many places, that Sir W. Batten at table cried, "By
God," says he, "I think the Devil shits Dutchmen."

20th. Up and to the office, where all the morning, and then towards the
'Change, at noon, in my way observing my mistake yesterday in Mark Lane,
that the woman I saw was not the pretty woman I meant, the line-maker's
wife, but a new-married woman, very pretty, a strong-water seller: and
in going by, to my content, I find that the very pretty daughter at the
Ship tavern, at the end of Billiter Lane, is there still, and in the
bar: and, I believe, is married to him that is new come, and hath new
trimmed the house. Home to dinner, and then to the office, we having
dispatched away Mr. Oviatt to Hull, about our prizes there; and I have
wrote a letter of thanks by him to Lord Bellasses, who had writ to me to
offer all his service for my interest there, but I dare not trust him.
In the evening late walking in the garden with my wife, and then to bed.

21st (Lord's day). Up betimes, and all the morning, and then to dinner
with my wife alone, and then all the afternoon in like manner, in my
chamber, making up my Tangier accounts and drawing a letter, which
I have done at last to my full content, to present to the Lords
Commissioners for Tangier tomorrow; and about seven at night, when
finished my letter and weary, I and my wife and Mercer up by water to
Barne Elmes, where we walked by moonshine, and called at Lambeth, and
drank and had cold meat in the boat, and did eat, and sang, and down
home, by almost twelve at night, very fine and pleasant, only could not
sing ordinary songs with the freedom that otherwise I would. Here Mercer
tells me