here to meet our neighbours, all of the
Parish, this being Procession-day, to dine. And did; and much very good
discourse; they being, most of them, very able merchants as any in
the City: Sir Andrew Rickard, Mr. Vandeputt, Sir John Fredericke,
Harrington, and others. They talked with Mr. Mills about the meaning
of this day, and the good uses of it; and how heretofore, and yet in
several places, they do whip a boy at each place they stop at in their
procession. Thence I to the Duke of York's playhouse, and there saw
"The Tempest," which still pleases me mightily, and thence to the
New Exchange, and then home, and in the way stopped to talk with Mr.
Brisband, who gives me an account of the rough usage Sir G. Carteret and
his Counsel had the other day, before the Commissioners of Accounts, and
what I do believe we shall all of us have, in a greater degree than any
he hath had yet with them, before their three years are out, which are
not yet begun, nor God knows when they will, this being like to be no
session of Parliament, when they now rise. So home, and there took up
Mrs. Turner and carried her to Mile End and drank, and so back talking,
and so home and to bed, I being mighty cold, this being a mighty cold
day, and I had left off my waistcoat three or four days. This evening,
coming home in the dusk, I saw and spoke to our Nell, Pain's daughter,
and had I not been very cold I should have taken her to Tower hill para
together et toker her. Thus ends this month; my wife in the country,
myself full of pleasure and expence; and some trouble for my friends, my
Lord Sandwich, by the Parliament, and more for my eyes, which are daily
worse and worse, that I dare not write or read almost any thing.
The Parliament going in a few days to rise; myself so long without
accounting now, for seven or eight months, I think, or more, that I know
not what condition almost I am in, as to getting or spending for all
that time, which troubles me, but I will soon do it. The kingdom in an
ill state through poverty; a fleete going out, and no money to maintain
it, or set it out; seamen yet unpaid, and mutinous when pressed to go
out again; our Office able to do little, nobody trusting us, nor we
desiring any to trust us, and yet have not money for any thing, but only
what particularly belongs to this fleete going out, and that but lamely
too. The Parliament several months upon an Act for L300,000, but cannot
or will not agree upon it, but do kee