maps of several cities and did buy
two books of cities stitched together cost me 9s. 6d., and when I came
home thought of my vowe, and paid 5s. into my poor box for it, hoping
in God that I shall forfeit no more in that kind. Thence, meeting Mr.
Moore, and to the Exchange and there found my wife at pretty Doll's,
and thence by coach set her at my uncle Wight's, to go with my aunt to
market once more against Lent, and I to the Coffee-house, and thence
to the 'Change, my chief business being to enquire about the manner of
other countries keeping of their masts wet or dry, and got good advice
about it, and so home, and alone ate a bad, cold dinner, my people being
at their washing all day, and so to the office and all the afternoon
upon my letter to Mr. Coventry about keeping of masts, and ended it very
well at night and wrote it fair over. This evening came Mr. Alsopp the
King's brewer, with whom I spent an houre talking and bewailing the
posture of things at present; the King led away by half-a-dozen men,
that none of his serious servants and friends can come at him. These
are Lauderdale, Buckingham, Hamilton, Fitz-Harding (to whom he hath, it
seems, given L2,000 per annum in the best part of the King's estate);
and that that the old Duke of Buckingham could never get of the King.
Progers is another, and Sir H. Bennett. He loves not the Queen at all,
but is rather sullen to her; and she, by all reports, incapable of
children. He is so fond of the Duke of Monmouth, that every body admires
it; and he says the Duke hath said, that he would be the death of any
man that says the King was not married to his mother: though Alsopp
says, it is well known that she was a common whore before the King lay
with her. But it seems, he says, that the King is mighty kind to these
his bastard children; and at this day will go at midnight to my Lady
Castlemaine's nurses, and take the child and dance it in his arms: that
he is not likely to have his tables up again in his house,--[The tables
at which the king dined in public.-B.]--for the crew that are about
him will not have him come to common view again, but keep him obscurely
among themselves. He hath this night, it seems, ordered that the Hall
(which there is a ball to be in to-night before the King) be guarded, as
the Queen-Mother's is, by his Horse Guards; whereas heretofore they were
by the Lord Chamberlain or Steward, and their people. But it is feared
they will reduce all to the soldi