n Mr. Pierce and
his wife, and boy, and Betty; and then I sent for Mercer; so that we
had, with my wife and I, twelve at table, and very good and pleasant
company, and a most neat and excellent, but dear dinner; but, Lord! to
see with what envy they looked upon all my fine plate was pleasant;
for I made the best shew I could, to let them understand me and my
condition, to take down the pride of Mrs. Clerke, who thinks herself
very great. We sat long, and very merry, and all things agreeable; and,
after dinner, went out by coaches, thinking to have seen a play, but
come too late to both houses, and then they had thoughts of going
abroad somewhere; but I thought all the charge ought not to be mine, and
therefore I endeavoured to part the company, and so ordered it to set
them all down at Mrs. Pierces; and there my wife and I and Mercer left
them in good humour, and we three to the King's house, and saw the
latter end of the "Surprisall," a wherein was no great matter, I
thought, by what I saw there. Thence away to Polichinello, and there
had three times more sport than at the play, and so home, and there the
first night we have been this year in the garden late, we three and our
Barker singing very well, and then home to supper, and so broke up, and
to bed mightily pleased with this day's pleasure.

9th. Up. and to the office a while, none of my fellow officers coming to
sit, it being holiday, and so towards noon I to the Exchange, and there
do hear mighty cries for peace, and that otherwise we shall be undone;
and yet I do suspect the badness of the peace we shall make. Several do
complain of abundance of land flung up by tenants out of their hands
for want of ability to pay their rents; and by name, that the Duke of
Buckingham hath L6000 so flung up. And my father writes, that Jasper
Trice, upon this pretence of his tenants' dealing with him, is broke
up housekeeping, and gone to board with his brother, Naylor, at Offord;
which is very sad. So home to dinner, and after dinner I took coach and
to the King's house, and by and by comes after me my wife with W. Hewer
and his mother and Barker, and there we saw "The Tameing of a Shrew,"
which hath some very good pieces in it, but generally is but a mean
play; and the best part, "Sawny,"

[This play was entitled "Sawney the Scot, or the Taming of a Shrew,"
and consisted of an alteration of Shakespeare's play by John Lacy.
Although it had long been popular it w