o can help it. So I resolve not to be
troubled at it, though I fear I cannot bear it so, my spirit being very
poor and mean as to the bearing with trouble that I do find of myself.
So home, and there to my chamber and did some business,--and thence to
supper and to bed.

4th. Up, and to the office, where a full Board sat all the morning, busy
among other things concerning a solemn letter we intend to write to
the Duke of York about the state of the things of the Navy, for want
of money, though I doubt it will be to little purpose. After dinner I
abroad by coach to Kate Joyce's, where the jury did sit where they
did before, about her husband's death, and their verdict put off for
fourteen days longer, at the suit of somebody, under pretence of the
King; but it is only to get money out of her to compound the matter. But
the truth is, something they will make out of Stillingfleete's sermon,
which may trouble us, he declaring, like a fool, in his pulpit, that he
did confess that his losses in the world did make him do what he did.
This do vex me to see how foolish our Protestant Divines are, while the
Papists do make it the duty of Confessor to be secret, or else nobody
would confess their sins to them. All being put off for to-day, I took
my leave of Kate, who is mightily troubled at it for her estate sake,
not for her husband; for her sorrow for that, I perceive, is all over. I
home, and, there to my office busy till the evening, and then home, and
there my wife and Deb. and I and Betty Turner, I employed in the putting
new titles to my books, which we proceeded on till midnight, and then
being weary and late to bed.

5th. Up, and I to Captain Cocke's, where he and I did discourse of our
business that we are to go about to the Commissioners of Accounts about
our prizes, and having resolved to conceal nothing but to confess the
truth, the truth being likely to do us most good, we parted, and I to
White Hall, where missing of the Commissioners of the Treasury, I to the
Commissioners of Accounts, where I was forced to stay two hours before I
was called in, and when come in did take an oath to declare the truth to
what they should ask me, which is a great power; I doubt more than the
Act do, or as some say can, give them, to force a man to swear against
himself; and so they fell to enquire about the business of prize-goods,
wherein I did answer them as well as I could, answer them in everything
the just truth, keeping myself