ting in execution the Act against
Nonconformists and Papists, but yet it is conceived that for all this
some liberty must be given, and people will have it. Here I met with
my cozen Roger Pepys, who is come to town, and hath been told of my
performance before the House the other day, and is mighty proud of it,
and Captain Cocke met me here to-day, and told me that the Speaker says
he never heard such a defence made; in all his life, in the House; and
that the Sollicitor-Generall do commend me even to envy. I carried
cozen Roger as far as the Strand, where, spying out of the coach
Colonel Charles George Cocke, formerly a very great man, and my father's
customer, whom I have carried clothes to, but now walks like a poor
sorry sneake, he stopped, and I 'light to him. This man knew me, which
I would have willingly avoided, so much pride I had, he being a man
of mighty height and authority in his time, but now signifies nothing.
Thence home, where to the office a while and then home, where W.
Batelier was and played at cards and supped with us, my eyes being out
of order for working, and so to bed.

12th. Up, and to the office, where all the morning, at noon home, and
after dinner with wife and Deb., carried them to Unthanke's, and I to
Westminster Hall expecting our being with the Committee this afternoon
about Victualling business, but once more waited in vain. So after a
turn or two with Lord Brouncker, I took my wife up and left her at the
'Change while I to Gresham College, there to shew myself; and was there
greeted by Dr. Wilkins, Whistler, and others, as the patron of the Navy
Office, and one that got great fame by my late speech to the Parliament.
Here I saw a great trial of the goodness of a burning glass, made of a
new figure, not spherical (by one Smithys, I think, they call him), that
did burn a glove of my Lord Brouncker's from the heat of a very little
fire, which a burning glass of the old form, or much bigger, could not
do, which was mighty pretty. Here I heard Sir Robert Southwell give an
account of some things committed to him by the Society at his going to
Portugall, which he did deliver in a mighty handsome manner.

[At the meeting of the Royal Society on March 12th, 1668, "Mr.
Smethwick's glasses were tried again; and his telescope being
compared with another longer telescope, and the object-glasses
exchanged, was still found to exceed the other in goodness; and his
burning con