and eat and drank, and so to
White Hall to the Duke of York's chamber, where I find him and my
fellows at their usual meeting, discoursing about securing the Medway
this year, which is to shut the door after the horse is stole. However,
it is good. Having done here, my Lord Brouncker, and W. Pen, and I, and
with us Sir Arnold Breames, to the King's playhouse, and there saw a
piece of "Love in a Maze," a dull, silly play, I think; and after the
play, home with W. Pen and his son Lowther, whom we met there, and then
home and sat most of the evening with my wife and Mr. Pelting, talking,
my head being full of business of one kind or other, and most such as do
not please me, and so to supper and to bed.

8th. Up, and to the office, where sat all day, and at noon home, and
there find cozen Roger and Jackson by appointment come to dine with me,
and Creed, and very merry, only Jackson hath few words, and I like him
never the worse for it. The great talk is of Carr's coming off in all
his trials, to the disgrace of my Lord Gerard, to that degree, and the
ripping up of so many notorious rogueries and cheats of my Lord's, that
my Lord, it is thought, will be ruined; and, above all things, do skew
the madness of the House of Commons, who rejected the petition of this
poor man by a combination of a few in the House; and, much more, the
base proceedings (just the epitome of all our publick managements in
this age), of the House of Lords, that ordered him to stand in the
pillory for those very things, without hearing and examining what he
hath now, by the seeking of my Lord Gerard himself, cleared himself of,
in open Court, to the gaining himself the pity of all the world, and
shame for ever to my Lord Gerard. We had a great deal of good discourse
at table, and after dinner we four men took coach, and they set me down
at the Old Exchange, and they home, having discoursed nothing today with
cozen or Jackson about our business. I to Captain Cocke's, and there
discoursed over our business of prizes, and I think I shall go near to
state the matter so as to secure myself without wrong to him, doing nor
saying anything but the very truth. Thence away to the Strand, to my
bookseller's, and there staid an hour, and bought the idle, rogueish
book, "L'escholle des filles;" which I have bought in plain binding,
avoiding the buying of it better bound, because I resolve, as soon as
I have read it, to burn it, that it may not stand in the list of