ignorance of the present instructions of
Officers, that I am ashamed to hear it. However, I do take a copy of it,
for my future use and answering; and so to church, where, God forgive
me! I did most of the time gaze on the fine milliner's wife, in
Fenchurch Street, who was at our church to-day; and so home to dinner.
And after dinner to write down my Journall; and then abroad by coach
with my cozens, to their father's, where we are kindly received, but he
is an great pain for his man Arthur, who, he fears, is now dead, having
been desperately sick, and speaks so much of him that my cozen, his
wife, and I did make mirth of it, and call him Arthur O'Bradly.
After staying here a little, and eat and drank, and she gave me some
ginger-bread made in cakes, like chocolate, very good, made by a friend,
I carried him and her to my cozen Turner's, where we staid, expecting
her coming from church; but she coming not, I went to her husband's
chamber in the Temple, and thence fetched her, she having been there
alone ever since sermon staying till the evening to walk home on foot,
her horses being ill. This I did, and brought her home. And after
talking there awhile, and agreeing to be all merry at my house on
Tuesday next, I away home; and there spent the evening talking and
reading, with my wife and Mr. Pelling, and yet much troubled with my
cold, it hardly suffering me to speak, we to bed.

MARCH 1668-1669

March 1st. Up, and to White Hall to the Committee of Tangier, but it did
not meet. But here I do hear first that my Lady Paulina Montagu did die
yesterday; at which I went to my Lord's lodgings, but he is shut up with
sorrow, and so not to be spoken with: and therefore I returned, and to
Westminster Hall, where I have not been, I think, in some months. And
here the Hall was very full, the King having, by Commission to some
Lords this day, prorogued the Parliament till the 19th of October next:
at which I am glad, hoping to have time to go over to France this year.
But I was most of all surprised this morning by my Lord Bellassis, who,
by appointment, met me at Auditor Wood's, at the Temple, and tells me of
a duell designed between the Duke of Buckingham and my Lord Halifax,
or Sir W. Coventry; the challenge being carried by Harry Saville, but
prevented by my Lord Arlington, and the King told of it; and this was
all the discourse at Court this day. But I, meeting Sir W. Coventry in
the Duke of York's chamber, he would not