This morning they are upon a Bill, brought in to-day
by Sir Richard Temple, for obliging the King to call Parliaments every
three years; or, if he fail, for others to be obliged to do it, and to
keep him from a power of dissolving any Parliament in less than forty
days after their first day of sitting, which is such a Bill as do speak
very high proceedings, to the lessening of the King; and this they will
carry, and whatever else they desire, before they will give any money;
and the King must have money, whatever it cost him. I stepped to the
Dog Tavern, and thither come to me Doll Lane, and there we did drink
together, and she tells me she is my valentine.... Thence, she being
gone, and having spoke with Mr. Spicer here, whom I sent for hither to
discourse about the security of the late Act of 11 months' tax on which
I have secured part of my money lent to Tangier. I to the Hall, and
there met Sir W. Pen, and he and I to the Beare, in Drury Lane, an
excellent ordinary, after the French manner, but of Englishmen; and
there had a good fricassee, our dinner coming to 8s., which was mighty
pretty, to my great content; and thence, he and I to the King's house,
and there, in one of the upper boxes, saw "Flora's Vagarys," which is
a very silly play; and the more, I being out of humour, being at a play
without my wife, and she ill at home, and having no desire also to be
seen, and, therefore, could not look about me. Thence to the Temple,
and there we parted, and I to see Kate Joyce, where I find her and her
friends in great ease of mind, the jury having this day given in their
verdict that her husband died of a feaver. Some opposition there was,
the foreman pressing them to declare the cause of the feaver, thinking
thereby to obstruct it: but they did adhere to their verdict, and would
give no reason; so all trouble is now over, and she safe in her estate,
which I am mighty glad of, and so took leave, and home, and up to my
wife, not owning my being at a play, and there she shews me her ring of
a Turky-stone set with little sparks of dyamonds,

[The turquoise. This stone was sometimes referred to simply as the
turkey, and Broderip ("Zoological Recreations") conjectured that the
bird (turkey) took its name from the blue or turquoise colour of the
skin about its head.]

which I am to give her, as my Valentine, and I am not much troubled at
it. It will cost me near L5--she costing me but little compared with