my Lord
Shrewsbury is likely to do well, after his great wound in the late
dwell. He gone, comes W. Hewer and supped with me, and so to talk
of things, and he tells me that Mr. Jessop is made Secretary to the
Commissions of Parliament for Accounts, and I am glad, and it is pretty
to see that all the Cavalier party were not able to find the Parliament
nine Commissioners, or one Secretary, fit for the business. So he gone,
I to read a little in my chamber, and so to bed.
20th. Up, and all the morning at the office very busy, and at noon
by coach to Westminster, to the 'Chequer, about a warrant for Tangier
money. In my way both coming and going I did stop at Drumbleby's, the
pipe-maker, there to advise about the making of a flageolet to go low
and soft; and he do shew me a way which do do, and also a fashion of
having two pipes of the same note fastened together, so as I can play on
one, and then echo it upon the other, which is mighty pretty. So to my
Lord Crew's to dinner, where we hear all the good news of our making a
league now with Holland against the French power coming over them, or us
which is the first good act that hath been done a great while, and done
secretly, and with great seeming wisdom; and is certainly good for us
at this time, while we are in no condition to resist the French, if they
should come over hither; and then a little time of peace will give us
time to lay up something, which these Commissioners of the Treasury are
doing; and the world do begin to see that they will do the King's work
for him, if he will let them. Here dined Mr. Case, the minister, who,
Lord! do talk just as I remember he used to preach, and did tell a
pretty story of a religious lady, Queen of Navarre;
[Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre, sister of Francis I. of
France. The "pretty story" was doubtless from her "Heptameron," a
work imitating in title and matter the "Decameron" of Boccaccio.
She is said to be the heroine of some of the adventures. It is fair
to add that she wrote also the "Miroir dune Ame Pecheresse,"
translated into English by Queen Elizabeth, the title of whose book
was "A Godly Medytacyon of the Christian Soules," published by John
Bale in 1548.--B.]
and my Lord also told a good story of Mr. Newman, the Minister in New
England, who wrote the Concordance, of his foretelling his death and
preaching a funeral sermon, and did at last bid the angels do their
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