, is going this day for the summer into the country. I
bespoke some sugar, &c., for my father, and so home to the office, where
all the morning. At noon dined at home, and then by water to White Hall
to Sir G. Carteret about money for the office, a sad thought, for in a
little while all must go to wracke, winter coming on apace, when a great
sum must be ready to pay part of the fleete, and so far we are from it
that we have not enough to stop the mouths of poor people and their hands
from falling about our eares here almost in the office. God give a good
end to it! Sir G. Carteret told me one considerable thing: Alderman
Backewell is ordered abroad upon some private score with a great sum of
money; wherein I was instrumental the other day in shipping him away. It
seems some of his creditors have taken notice of it, and he was like to be
broke yesterday in his absence; Sir G. Carteret telling me that the King
and the kingdom must as good as fall with that man at this time; and that
he was forced to get L4000 himself to answer Backewell's people's
occasions, or he must have broke; but committed this to me as a great
secret and which I am heartily sorry to hear. Thence, after a little
merry discourse of our marrying business, I parted, and by coach to
several places, among others to see my Lord Brunkerd, who is not well, but
was at rest when I come. I could not see him, nor had much mind, one of
the great houses within two doors of him being shut up: and, Lord! the
number of houses visited, which this day I observed through the town quite
round in my way by Long Lane and London Wall. So home to the office, and
thence to Sir W. Batten, and spent the evening at supper; and, among other
discourse, the rashness of Sir John Lawson, for breeding up his daughter
so high and proud, refusing a man of great interest, Sir W. Barkeley, to
match her with a melancholy fellow, Colonell Norton's' son, of no interest
nor good nature nor generosity at all, giving her L6000, when the other
would have taken her with two; when he himself knew that he was not worth
the money himself in all the world, he did give her that portion, and is
since dead, and left his wife and two daughters beggars, and the other
gone away with L6000, and no content in it, through the ill qualities of
her father-in-law and husband, who, it seems, though a pretty woman,
contracted for her as if he had been buying a horse; and, worst of all, is
now of no use to serv