2nd. Up, and at the office all the morning. At noon with Lord Brouncker
in his coach as far as the Temple, and there 'light and to Hercules
Pillars, and there dined, and thence to the Duke of York's playhouse,
at a little past twelve, to get a good place in the pit, against the new
play, and there setting a poor man to keep my place, I out, and spent an
hour at Martin's, my bookseller's, and so back again, where I find the
house quite full. But I had my place, and by and by the King comes and
the Duke of York; and then the play begins, called "The Sullen Lovers;
or, The Impertinents," having many good humours in it, but the play
tedious, and no design at all in it. But a little boy, for a farce, do
dance Polichinelli, the best that ever anything was done in the world,
by all men's report: most pleased with that, beyond anything in the
world, and much beyond all the play. Thence to the King's house to see
Knepp, but the play done; and so I took a hackney alone, and to the
park, and there spent the evening, and to the lodge, and drank new milk.
And so home to the Office, ended my letters, and, to spare my eyes,
home, and played on my pipes, and so to bed.
3rd (Lord's day). Up, and to church, where I saw Sir A. Rickard, though
he be under the Black Rod, by order of the Lords' House, upon the
quarrel between the East India Company and Skinner, which is like to
come to a very great heat between the two Houses. At noon comes Mr.
Mills and his wife, and Mr. Turner and his wife, by invitation to
dinner, and we were mighty merry, and a very pretty dinner, of my
Bridget and Nell's dressing, very handsome. After dinner to church
again.... So home and with Sir W. Pen took a hackney, and he and I to
Old Street, to a brew-house there, to see Sir Thomas Teddiman, who is
very ill in bed of a fever, got, I believe, by the fright the Parliament
have put him into, of late. But he is a good man, a good seaman, and
stout. Thence Pen and I to Islington, and there, at the old house, eat,
and drank, and merry, and there by chance giving two pretty fat boys
each of them a cake, they proved to be Captain Holland's children, whom
therefore I pity. So round by Hackney home, having good discourse, he
[Pen] being very open to me in his talk, how the King ought to dissolve
this Parliament, when the Bill of Money is passed, they being never
likely to give him more; how he [the King] hath great opportunity of
making himself popular by stopping this Act
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