my former design; and so, after supper, to bed.

25th. Up, and all the morning finishing my letter to Sir Robert Brookes,
which I did with great content, and yet at noon when I come home to
dinner I read it over again after it was sealed and delivered to the
messenger, and read it to my clerks who dined with me, and there I did
resolve upon some alteration, and caused it to be new writ, and so to
the office after dinner, and there all the afternoon mighty busy, and
at night did take coach thinking to have gone to Westminster, but it was
mighty dark and foul, and my business not great, only to keep my eyes
from reading by candle, being weary, but being gone part of my way I
turned back, and so home, and there to read, and my wife to read to me
out of Sir Robert Cotton's book about warr, which is very fine, showing
how the Kings of England have raised money by the people heretofore
upon the people, and how they have played upon the kings also. So after
supper I to bed. This morning Sir W. Pen tells me that the House was
very hot on Saturday last upon the business of liberty of speech in
the House, and damned the vote in the beginning of the Long Parliament
against it; I so that he fears that there may be some bad thing which
they have a mind to broach, which they dare not do without more security
than they now have. God keep us, for things look mighty ill!

26th. Up, all the morning at the office, and then home to dinner, where
dined Mr. Clerke, solicitor, with me, to discourse about my Tangier
accounts, which I would fain make up, but I have not time. After dinner,
by coach as far as the Temple, and there saw a new book, in folio, of
all that suffered for the King in the late times, which I will buy,
it seems well writ, and then back to the Old Exchange, and there at my
goldsmith's bought a basin for my wife to give the Parson's child, to
which the other day she was godmother. It cost me; L10 14s. besides
graving, which I do with the cypher of the name, Daniel Mills, and so
home to the office, and then home to supper and hear my wife read, and
then to bed. This afternoon, after dinner, come to me Mr. Warren, and
there did tell me that he come to pay his debt to me for the kindness I
did him in getting his last ship out, which I must also remember was
a service to the King, though I did not tell him so, as appeared by my
advising with the board, and there writing to Sir W. Coventry to get the
pass for the ship to go for