or other, almost ever since the late great fire, as
if there was a fate sent people for fire. I walked over the Park to
Sir W. Coventry's. Among other things to tell him what I hear of people
being forced to sell their bills before September for 35 and 40 per
cent. loss, and what is worst, that there are some courtiers that have
made a knot to buy them, in hopes of some ways to get money of the
King to pay them, which Sir W. Coventry is amazed at, and says we are a
people made up for destruction, and will do what he can to prevent all
this by getting the King to provide wherewith to pay them. We talked
of Tangier, of which he is ashamed; also that it should put the King to
this charge for no good in the world: and now a man going over that is a
good soldier, but a debauched man, which the place need not to have.
And so used these words: "That this place was to the King as my Lord
Carnarvon says of wood, that it is an excrescence of the earth provided
by God for the payment of debts." Thence away to Sir G. Carteret, whom
I find taking physic. I staid talking with him but a little, and so home
to church, and heard a dull sermon, and most of the best women of our
parish gone into the country, or at least not at church. So home, and
find my boy not there, nor was at church, which vexed me, and when he
come home I enquired, he tells me he went to see his mother. I send him
back to her to send me some token that he was with her. So there come
a man with him back of good fashion. He says he saw him with her,
which pacified me, but I did soundly threaten him before him, and so to
dinner, and then had a little scolding with my wife for not being fine
enough to go to the christening to-day, which she excused by being ill,
as she was indeed, and cried, but I was in an ill humour and ashamed,
indeed, that she should not go dressed. However, friends by and by, and
we went by water to Michell's, and there his little house full of his
father and mothers and the kindred, hardly any else, and mighty merry
in this innocent company, and Betty mighty pretty in bed, but, her head
akeing, not very merry, but the company mighty merry, and I with them,
and so the child was christened; my wife, his father, and her mother,
the witnesses, and the child's name Elizabeth. So we had gloves and wine
and wafers, very pretty, and talked and tattled, and so we away by water
and up with the tide, she and I and Barker, as high as Barne Eimes, it
being a fin