he had learnt whether the Queen would
receive it, it being directed to his cozen. He says that many ladies in
Spain, after they are found to be with child, do never stir out of their
beds or chambers till they are brought to bed: so ceremonious they are
in that point also. He tells me of their wooing by serenades at the
window, and that their friends do always make the match; but yet that
they have opportunities to meet at masse at church, and there they make
love: that the Court there hath no dancing, nor visits at night to see
the King or Queen, but is always just like a cloyster, nobody stirring
in it: that my Lord Sandwich wears a beard now, turned up in the Spanish
manner. But that which pleases me most indeed is, that the peace which
he hath made with Spain is now printed here, and is acknowledged by all
the merchants to be the best peace that ever England had with them: and
it appears that the King thinks it so, for this is printed before the
ratification is gone over; whereas that with France and Holland was
not in a good while after, till copys come over of it in English out of
Holland and France, that it was a reproach not to have it printed here.
This I am mighty glad of; and is the first and only piece of good news,
or thing fit to be owned, that this nation hath done several years.
After dinner I to the office, and they gone, anon comes Pelling, and he
and I to Gray's Inne Fields, thinking to have heard Mrs. Knight sing at
her lodgings, by a friend's means of his;

[Mrs. Knight, a celebrated singer and mistress of Charles II. There
is in Waller's "Poems" a song sung by her to the queen on her
birthday. In her portrait, engraved by Faber, after Kneller, she is
represented in mourning, and in a devout posture before a crucifix.
Evelyn refers to her singing as incomparable, and adds that she had
"the greatest reach of any English woman; she had been lately
roaming in Italy, and was much improv'd in that quality" ("Diary,"
December 2nd, 1674).]

but we come too late; so must try another time. So lost our labour, and
I by coach home, and there to my chamber, and did a great deal of good
business about my Tangier accounts, and so with pleasure discoursing
with my wife of our journey shortly to Brampton, and of this little
girle, which indeed runs in my head, and pleases me mightily, though I
dare not own it, and so to supper and to bed.

28th. Up, having slept not so muc