Lady Batten, and so sought
for other. Then the question was whether my wife should go, and she
having dressed herself on purpose, was very angry, and began to talk
openly of my keeping her within doors before Creed, which vexed me to
the guts, but I had the discretion to keep myself without passion, and
so resolved at last not to go, but to go down by water, which we did
by H. Russell--[a waterman]--to the Half-way house, and there eat and
drank, and upon a very small occasion had a difference again broke out,
where without any the least cause she had the cunning to cry a great
while, and talk and blubber, which made me mighty angry in mind, but
said nothing to provoke her because Creed was there, but walked home,
being troubled in my mind also about the knavery and neglect of Captain
Fudge and Taylor, who were to have had their ship for Tangier ready by
Thursday last, and now the men by a mistake are come on board, and not
any master or man or boy of the ship's company on board with them when
we came by her side this afternoon, and also received a letter from Mr.
Coventry this day in complaint of it. We came home, and after supper
Creed went home, and I to bed. My wife made great means to be friends,
coming to my bedside and doing all things to please me, and at last I
could not hold out, but seemed pleased, and so parted, and I with much
ado to sleep, but was easily wakened by extraordinary great rain, and
my mind troubled the more to think what the soldiers would do on board
tonight in all this weather.

13th. So up at 5 o'clock, and with Captain Taylor on board her at
Deptford, and found all out of order, only the soldiers civil, and Sir
Arthur Bassett a civil person. I rated at Captain Taylor, whom, contrary
to my expectation, I found a lying and a very stupid blundering fellow,
good for nothing, and yet we talk of him in the Navy as if he had been
an excellent officer, but I find him a lying knave, and of no judgment
or dispatch at all. After finding the condition of the ship, no master,
not above four men, and many ship's provisions, sayls, and other things
wanting, I went back and called upon Fudge, whom I found like a lying
rogue unready to go on board, but I did so jeer him that I made him get
every thing ready, and left Taylor and H. Russell to quicken him, and so
away and I by water on to White Hall, where I met his Royal Highnesse at
a Tangier Committee about this very thing, and did there satisfy him how