truth is, I have indulged myself more in pleasure for these last two
months than ever I did in my life before, since I come to be a person
concerned in business; and I doubt, when I come to make up my accounts,
I shall find it so by the expence.

23rd. Up, and walked to the Exchange, there to get a coach but failed,
and so was forced to walk a most dirty walk to the Old Swan, and there
took boat, and so to the Exchange, and there took coach to St. James's
and did our usual business with the Duke of York. Thence I walked over
the Park to White Hall and took water to Westminster, and there, among
other things, bought the examinations of the business about the Fire of
London, which is a book that Mrs. Pierce tells me hath been commanded to
be burnt. The examinations indeed are very plain. Thence to the Excise
office, and so to the Exchange, and did a little business, and so home
and took up my wife, and so carried her to the other end, where I 'light
at my Lord Ashly's, by invitation, to dine there, which I did, and
Sir H. Cholmly, Creed, and Yeabsly, upon occasion of the business of
Yeabsly, who, God knows, do bribe him very well for it; and it is pretty
to see how this great man do condescend to these things, and do all he
can in his examining of his business to favour him, and yet with great
cunning not to be discovered but by me that am privy to it. At table it
is worth remembering that my Lord tells us that the House of Lords is
the last appeal that a man can make, upon a poynt of interpretation of
the law, and that therein they are above the judges; and that he did
assert this in the Lords' House upon the late occasion of the quarrel
between my Lord Bristoll and the Chancellor, when the former did accuse
the latter of treason, and the judges did bring it in not to be treason:
my Lord Ashly did declare that the judgment of the judges was nothing
in the presence of their Lordships, but only as far as they were the
properest men to bring precedents; but not to interpret the law to their
Lordships, but only the inducements of their persuasions: and this the
Lords did concur in. Another pretty thing was my Lady Ashly's speaking
of the bad qualities of glass-coaches; among others, the flying open
of the doors upon any great shake: but another was, that my Lady
Peterborough being in her glass-coach, with the glass up, and seeing a
lady pass by in a coach whom she would salute, the glass was so clear,
that she thought it ha