d reading of
Quarles' Emblems. So home and to bed.

8th (Sunday). In the morning I went to Mr. Gunning's, where a good
sermon, wherein he showed the life of Christ, and told us good authority
for us to believe that Christ did follow his father's trade, and was a
carpenter till thirty years of age. From thence to my father's to dinner,
where I found my wife, who was forced to dine there, we not having one
coal of fire in the house, and it being very hard frosty weather. In the
afternoon my father, he going to a man's to demand some money due to my
Aunt Bells my wife and I went to Mr. Mossum's, where a strange doctor made
a very good sermon. From thence sending my wife to my father's, I went to
Mrs. Turner's, and staid a little while, and then to my father's, where I
found Mr. Sheply, and after supper went home together. Here I heard of
the death of Mr. Palmer, and that he was to be buried at Westminster
tomorrow.

9th. For these two or three days I have been much troubled with thoughts
how to get money to pay them that I have borrowed money of, by reason of
my money being in my uncle's hands. I rose early this morning, and looked
over and corrected my brother John's speech, which he is to make the next
apposition,--[Declamations at St. Paul's School, in which there were
opponents and respondents.]--and after that I went towards my office, and
in my way met with W. Simons, Muddiman, and Jack Price, and went with them
to Harper's and in many sorts of talk I staid till two of the clock in the
afternoon. I found Muddiman a good scholar, an arch rogue; and owns that
though he writes new books for the Parliament, yet he did declare that he
did it only to get money; and did talk very basely of many of them. Among
other things, W. Simons told me how his uncle Scobel was on Saturday last
called to the bar, for entering in the journal of the House, for the year
1653, these words: "This day his Excellence the Lord General Cromwell
dissolved this House;" which words the Parliament voted a forgery, and
demanded of him how they came to be entered. He answered that they were
his own handwriting, and that he did it by virtue of his office, and the
practice of his predecessor; and that the intent of the practice was
to--let posterity know how such and such a Parliament was dissolved,
whether by the command of the King, or by their own neglect, as the last
House of Lords was; and that to this end, he had said and writ that it wa