there as was expected. This day our girle Mary, whom
Payne helped us to, to be under his daughter, when she come to be our
cook-mayde, did go away declaring that she must be where she might earn
something one day, and spend it and play away the next. But a good civil
wench, and one neither wife nor I did ever give angry word to, but she
has this silly vanity that she must play.

11th. Up betimes and to my office, and there busy till the office (which
was only Sir T. Harvy and myself) met, and did little business and
then broke up. He tells me that the Council last night did sit close to
determine of the King's answer about the peace, and that though he do
not certainly know, yet by all discourse yesterday he do believe it is
peace, and that the King had said it should be peace, and had bidden
Alderman Baclewell to declare [it] upon the 'Change. It is high time for
us to have peace that the King and Council may get up their credits and
have time to do it, for that indeed is the bottom of all our misery,
that nobody have any so good opinion of the King and his Council and
their advice as to lend money or venture their persons, or estates, or
pains upon people that they know cannot thrive with all that we can do,
but either by their corruption or negligence must be undone. This indeed
is the very bottom of every man's thought, and the certain ground that
we must be ruined unless the King change his course, or the Parliament
come and alter it. At noon dined alone with my wife. All the afternoon
close at the office, very hard at gathering papers and putting things in
order against the Parliament, and at night home with my wife to supper,
and then to bed, in hopes to have all things in my office in good
condition in a little time for any body to examine, which I am sure none
else will.

12th. Up betimes and to my chamber, there doing business, and by and by
comes Greeting and begun a new month with him, and now to learn to set
anything from the notes upon the flageolet, but, Lord! to see how like a
fool he goes about to give me direction would make a man mad. I then
out and by coach to White Hall and to the Treasury chamber, where did
a little business, and thence to the Exchequer to Burges, about Tangier
business, and so back again, stepping into the Hall a little, and then
homeward by coach, and met at White Hall with Sir H. Cholmly, and so
into his coach, and he with me to the Excise Office, there to do a
little business