office now not sitting, but only hereafter on Thursdays at
the office, I within all the morning about my papers and setting things
still in order, and also much time in settling matters with Dr.
Twisden. At noon am sent for by Sir G. Carteret, to meet him and my Lord
Hinchingbroke at Deptford, but my Lord did not come thither, he having
crossed the river at Gravesend to Dagenhams, whither I dare not follow
him, they being afeard of me; but Sir G. Carteret says, he is a most
sweet youth in every circumstance. Sir G. Carteret being in haste of
going to the Duke of Albemarle and the Archbishop, he was pettish, and
so I could not fasten any discourse, but take another time. So he gone,
I down to Greenwich and sent away the Bezan, thinking to go with my wife
to-night to come back again to-morrow night to the Soveraigne at the
buoy off the Nore. Coming back to Deptford, old Bagwell walked a little
way with me, and would have me in to his daughter's, and there he being
gone 'dehors, ego had my volunte de su hiza'. Eat and drank and away
home, and after a little at the office to my chamber to put more things
still in order, and late to bed. The people die so, that now it seems
they are fain to carry the dead to be buried by day-light, the nights
not sufficing to do it in. And my Lord Mayor commands people to be
within at nine at night all, as they say, that the sick may have liberty
to go abroad for ayre. There is one also dead out of one of our ships
at Deptford, which troubles us mightily; the Providence fire-ship, which
was just fitted to go to sea. But they tell me to-day no more sick on
board. And this day W. Bodham tells me that one is dead at Woolwich,
not far from the Rope-yard. I am told, too, that a wife of one of the
groomes at Court is dead at Salsbury; so that the King and Queene are
speedily to be all gone to Milton. God preserve us!

13th (Lord's day). Up betimes and to my chamber, it being a very wet
day all day, and glad am I that we did not go by water to see "The
Soveraigne"

["The Sovereign of the Seas" was built at Woolwich in 1637 of timber
which had been stripped of its bark while growing in the spring, and
not felled till the second autumn afterwards; and it is observed by
Dr. Plot ("Phil. Trans." for 1691), in his discourse on the most
seasonable time for felling timber, written by the advice of Pepys,
that after forty-seven years, "all the ancient timber then remaining