tice that the justices of Middlesex do meet to-morrow
at Hicks Hall, and that I as one am desired to be there, but I fear I
cannot be there though I much desire it.

7th. This morning the judge Advocate Fowler came to see me, and he and
I sat talking till it was time to go to the office. To the office and
there staid till past 12 o'clock, and so I left the Comptroller and
Surveyor and went to Whitehall to my Lord's, where I found my Lord gone
this morning to Huntingdon, as he told me yesterday he would. I staid
and dined with my Lady, there being Laud the page's mother' there, and
dined also with us, and seemed to have been a very pretty woman and of
good discourse. Before dinner I examined Laud in his Latin and found him
a very pretty boy and gone a great way in Latin. After dinner I took a
box of some things of value that my Lord had left for me to carry to the
Exchequer, which I did, and left them with my Brother Spicer, who also
had this morning paid L1000 for me by appointment to Sir R. Parkhurst.
So to the Privy Seal, where I signed a deadly number of pardons, which
do trouble me to get nothing by. Home by water, and there was much
pleased to see that my little room is likely to come to be finished
soon. I fell a-reading Fuller's History of Abbys, and my wife in Great
Cyrus till twelve at night, and so to bed.

8th. To Whitehall to the Privy Seal, and thence to Mr. Pierces the
Surgeon to tell them that I would call by and by to go to dinner. But I
going into Westminster Hall met with Sir G. Carteret and Sir W. Pen (who
were in a great fear that we had committed a great error of L100,000 in
our late account gone into the Parliament in making it too little), and
so I was fain to send order to Mr. Pierces to come to my house; and also
to leave the key of the chest with Mr. Spicer; wherein my Lord's money
is, and went along with Sir W. Pen by water to the office, and there
with Mr. Huchinson we did find that we were in no mistake. And so I
went to dinner with my wife and Mr. and Mrs. Pierce the Surgeon to Mr.
Pierce, the Purser (the first time that ever I was at his house) who
does live very plentifully and finely. We had a lovely chine of beef and
other good things very complete and drank a great deal of wine, and her
daughter played after dinner upon the virginals,

[All instruments of the harpsichord and spinet kind were styled
virginals.]

and at night by lanthorn home again, and Mr. Pierce and his wi