re sat a while, and then my wife and I, it being a most
curious clear evening, after some rain to-day, took a most excellent
tour by coach to Bow, and there drank and back again, and so a little
at the office, and home to read a little, and to supper and bed mightily
refreshed with this evening's tour, but troubled that it hath hindered
my doing some business which I would have done at the office. This day
the newes is come that the fleete of the Dutch, of about 20 ships, which
come upon our coasts upon design to have intercepted our colliers, but
by good luck failed, is gone to the Frith,--[Frith of Forth. See 5th of
this month.]--and there lies, perhaps to trouble the Scotch privateers,
which have galled them of late very much, it may be more than all our
last year's fleete.

4th. Up and to the office, where sat all the morning, among other things
a great conflict I had with Sir W. Warren, he bringing a letter to the
Board, flatly in words charging them with their delays in passing his
accounts, which have been with them these two years, part of which I
said was not true, and the other undecent. The whole Board was concerned
to take notice of it, as well as myself, but none of them had the honour
to do it, but suffered me to do it alone, only Sir W. Batten, who did
what he did out of common spite to him. So I writ in the margin of the
letter, "Returned as untrue," and, by consent of the Board, did give it
him again, and so parted. Home to dinner, and there came a woman whose
husband I sent for, one Fisher, about the business of Perkins and
Carcasse, and I do think by her I shall find the business as bad as ever
it was, and that we shall find Commissioner Pett a rogue, using foul
play on behalf of Carcasse. After dinner to the office again, and there
late all the afternoon, doing much business, and with great content home
to supper and to bed.

5th (Lord's day). Up, and going down to the water side, I met Sir John
Robinson, and so with him by coach to White Hall, still a vain, prating,
boasting man as any I know, as if the whole City and Kingdom had all
its work done by him. He tells me he hath now got a street ordered to
be continued, forty feet broad, from Paul's through Cannon Street to the
Tower, which will be very fine. He and others this day, where I was in
the afternoon, do tell me of at least six or eight fires within these
few days; and continually stirs of fires, and real fires there have
been, in one place