h
with my wife and Deb., and so home, and there to bed.

24th. Up pretty betimes, and so there comes to me Mr. Shish, to desire
my appearing for him to succeed Mr. Christopher Pett, lately dead, in
his place of Master-Shipwright of Deptford and Woolwich, which I do
resolve to promote what I can. So by and by to White Hall, and there to
the Duke of York's chamber, where I understand it is already resolved
by the King and Duke of York that Shish shall have the place. From the
Duke's chamber Sir W. Coventry and I to walk in the Matted Gallery; and
there, among other things, he tells me of the wicked design that now is
at last contriving against him, to get a petition presented from people
that the money they have paid to W. Coventry for their places may be
repaid them back; and that this is set on by Temple and Hollis of the
Parliament, and, among other mean people in it, by Captain Tatnell: and
he prays me that I will use some effectual way to sift Tatnell what he
do, and who puts him on in this business, which I do undertake, and will
do with all my skill for his service, being troubled that he is still
under this difficulty. Thence up and down Westminster by Mrs. Burroughes
her mother's shop, thinking to have seen her, but could not, and
therefore back to White Hall, where great talk of the tumult at the
other end of the town, about Moore-fields, among the 'prentices, taking
the liberty of these holydays to pull down bawdy-houses.

[It was customary for the apprentices of the metropolis to avail
themselves of their holidays, especially on Shrove Tuesday, to
search after women of ill fame, and to confine them during the
season of Lent. See a "Satyre against Separatists," 1642.

"Stand forth, Shrove Tuesday, one a' the silenc'st bricklayers;
'Tis in your charge to pull down bawdy-houses."

Middleton's Inner Temple Masque, 1619,
Works, ed. Bullen, vii., 209.]

And, Lord! to see the apprehensions which this did give to all people
at Court, that presently order was given for all the soldiers, horse
and foot, to be in armes! and forthwith alarmes were beat by drum and
trumpet through Westminster, and all to their colours, and to horse, as
if the French were coming into the town! So Creed, whom I met here, and
I to Lincolne's Inn-fields, thinking to have gone into the fields
to have seen the 'prentices; but here we found these fields ful