Lords Commissioners
have with great difficulty found upon our letter to them this week that
would have required L50,000 among a great many occasions. After rising,
my Lord Anglesey, this being the second time of his being with us, did
take me aside and asked me where I lived, because he would be glad to
have some discourse with me. This I liked well enough, and told him I
would wait upon him, which I will do, and so all broke up, and I home to
dinner, where Mr. Pierce dined with us, who tells us what troubles me,
that my Lord Buckhurst hath got Nell away from the King's house, lies
with her, and gives her L100 a year, so as she hath sent her parts to
the house, and will act no more.

[Lord Buckhurst and Nell Gwyn, with the help of Sir Charles Sedley,
kept "merry house" at Epsom next door to the King's Head Inn (see
Cunningham's "Story of Nell Gwyn," ed. 1892, p. 57)]

And yesterday Sir Thomas Crew told me that Lacy lies a-dying of the pox,
and yet hath his whore by him, whom he will have to look on, he says,
though he can do no more; nor would receive any ghostly advice from a
Bishop, an old acquaintance of his, that went to see him. He says there
is a strangeness between the King and my Lady Castlemayne, as I was told
yesterday. After dinner my wife and I to the New Exchange, to pretty
maid Mrs. Smith's shop, where I left my wife, and I to Sir W. Coventry,
and there had the opportunity of talk with him, who I perceive do not
like our business of the change of the Treasurer's hand, and he tells me
that he is entered the lists with this new Treasurer before the King in
taking away the business of the Victualling money from his hand, and
the Regiment, and declaring that he hath no right to the 3d. per by
his patent, for that it was always heretofore given by particular Privy
Seal, and that the King and Council just upon his coming in had declared
L2000 a year sufficient. This makes him angry, but Sir W. Coventry I
perceive cares not, but do every day hold up his head higher and higher,
and this day I have received an order from the Commissioners of the
Treasury to pay no more pensions for Tangier, which I am glad of, and
he tells me they do make bold with all things of that kind. Thence I to
White Hall, and in the street I spied Mrs. Borroughs, and took a means
to meet and salute her and talk a little, and then parted, and I home
by coach, taking up my wife at the Exchange, and there I am mightily
pleased