ll be our last struggle from this business, for I am resolved
never to give any new occasion, and great peace I find in my mind by it.
So to supper, she and I to bed.

19th. Up, and to the office, where all the morning, and at noon, eating
very little dinner, my wife and I by hackney to the King's playhouse,
and there, the pit being full, satin a box above, and saw "Catiline's
Conspiracy," yesterday being the first day: a play of much good sense
and words to read, but that do appear the worst upon the stage, I mean,
the least diverting, that ever I saw any, though most fine in clothes;
and a fine scene of the Senate, and of a fight, that ever I saw in
my life. But the play is only to be read, and therefore home, with no
pleasure at all, but only in sitting next to Betty Hall, that did belong
to this house, and was Sir Philip Howard's mistress; a mighty pretty
wench, though my wife will not think so; and I dare neither commend, nor
be seen to look upon her, or any other now, for fear of offending her.
So, our own coach coming for us, home, and to end letters, and so home,
my wife to read to me out of "The Siege of Rhodes," and so to supper,
and to bed.

20th (Lord's day). Up, and with my wife to church, and then home, and
there found W. Joyce come to dine with me, as troublesome a talking
coxcombe as ever he was, and yet once in a year I like him well enough.
In the afternoon my wife and W. Hewer and I to White Hall, where they
set me down and staid till I had been with the Duke of York, with the
rest of us of the Office, and did a little business, and then the Duke
of York in good humour did fall to tell us many fine stories of the wars
in Flanders, and how the Spaniards are the [best] disciplined foot in
the world; will refuse no extraordinary service if commanded, but scorn
to be paid for it, as in other countries, though at the same time they
will beg in the streets: not a soldier will carry you a cloak-bag for
money for the world, though he will beg a penny, and will do the thing,
if commanded by his Commander. That, in the citadel of Antwerp, a
soldier hath not a liberty of begging till he hath served three years.
They will cry out against their King and Commanders and Generals, none
like them in the world, and yet will not hear a stranger say a word
of them but he will cut his throat. That, upon a time, some of the
Commanders of their army exclaiming against their Generals, and
particularly the Marquis de Caranen