nts might with ease, while they are going about
their business, at all hours, and without trouble or loss of time, have
their satisfaction, which they cannot have now without much trouble, and
loss of half a day, and no certainty of having the offices open. By this
he means a bank for common practise and use of merchants, and therein I
do agree with him. Being parted from Sir W. Pen and [Sir] G. Downing, I
to Westminster Hall and there met Balty, whom I had sent for, and there
did break the business of my getting him the place of going again as
Muster-Master with Harman this voyage to the West Indys, which indeed
I do owe to Sir W. Pen. He is mighty glad of it, and earnest to fit
himself for it, but I do find, poor man, that he is troubled how to
dispose of his wife, and apparently it is out of fear of her, and his
honour, and I believe he hath received some cause of this his jealousy
and care, and I do pity him in it, and will endeavour to find out some
way to do, it for him. Having put him in a way of preparing himself
for the voyage, I did go to the Swan, and there sent for Jervas, my old
periwig maker, and he did bring me a periwig, but it was full of nits,
so as I was troubled to see it (it being his old fault), and did send
him to make it clean, and in the mean time, having staid for him a good
while, did go away by water to the Castle Taverne, by Exeter House, and
there met Sir W. Batten, [Sir] W. Pen, and several others, among the
rest Sir Ellis Layton, who do apply himself to discourse with me, and
I think by his discourse, out of his opinion of my interest in Sir W.
Coventry, the man I find a wonderful witty, ready man for sudden answers
and little tales, and sayings very extraordinary witty, but in the
bottom I doubt he is not so. Yet he pretends to have studied men, and
the truth is in several that I do know he did give me a very inward
account of them. But above all things he did give me a full account,
upon my demand, of this judge of the Admiralty, Judge Jenkins; who, he
says, is a man never practised in this Court, but taken merely for his
merit and ability's sake from Trinity Hall, where he had always lived;
only by accident the business of the want of a Judge being proposed to
the present Archbishop of Canterbury that now is, he did think of this
man and sent for him up: and here he is, against the 'gre' and content
of the old Doctors, made judge, but is a very excellent man both for
judgment and temper,