26th (Lord's day). Up, and Sir J. Minnes set me down at my Lord
Sandwich's, where I waited till his coming down, when he came, too,
could find little to say to me but only a general question or two, and
so good-bye. Here his little daughter, my Lady Katharine was brought,
who is lately come from my father's at Brampton, to have her cheek
looked after, which is and hath long been sore. But my Lord will rather
have it be as it is, with a scarr in her face, than endanger it being
worse by tampering. He being gone, I went home, a little troubled to see
he minds me no more, and with Creed called at several churches, which,
God knows, are supplied with very young men, and the churches very
empty; so home and at our owne church looked in, and there heard one
preach whom Sir W. Pen brought, which he desired us yesterday to hear,
that had been his chaplin in Ireland, a very silly fellow. So home
and to dinner, and after dinner a frolique took us, we would go this
afternoon to the Hope; so my wife dressed herself, and, with good
victuals and drink, we took boat presently and the tide with us got
down, but it was night, and the tide spent by the time we got to
Gravesend; so there we stopped, but went not on shore, only Creed, to
get some cherries,

[Pliny tells us that cherries were introduced into Britain by the
Romans, and Lydgate alludes to them as sold in the London streets.
Richard Haines, fruiterer to Henry VI IL, imported a number of
cherry trees from Flanders, and planted them at Tenham, in Kent.
Hence the fame of the Kentish cherries.]

and send a letter to the Hope, where the Fleete lies. And so, it being
rainy, and thundering mightily, and lightning, we returned. By and
by the evening turned mighty clear and moonshine; we got with great
pleasure home, about twelve o'clock, which did much please us, Creed
telling pretty stories in the boat. He lay with me all night.

27th. Up, and he and I walked to Paul's Church yard, and there saw Sir
Harry Spillman's book, and I bespoke it and others, and thence we took
coach, and he to my Lord's and I to St. James's, where we did our usual
business, and thence I home and dined, and then by water to Woolwich,
and there spent the afternoon till night under pretence of buying
Captain Blackman's house and grounds, and viewing the ground took notice
of Clothiers' cordage with which he, I believe, thinks to cheat the
King. That being done I by water home, it b