ble,
that the House have stopped his son Jack (Sir John) his going to France,
that he may be a witness against my Lord Sandwich: which do trouble me,
though he can, I think, say little.

14th. At the office close all the morning. At noon, all my clerks with
me to dinner, to a venison pasty; and there comes Creed, and dined with
me, and he tells me how high the Lords were in the Lords' House about
the business of the Chancellor, and that they are not yet agreed to
impeach him. After dinner, he and I, and my wife and girl, the latter
two to their tailor's, and he and I to the Committee of the Treasury,
where I had a hearing, but can get but L6000 for the pay of the
garrison, in lieu of above L16,000; and this Alderman Backewell gets
remitted there, and I am glad of it. Thence by coach took up my wife and
girl, and so home, and set down Creed at Arundell House, going to the
Royal Society, whither I would be glad to go, but cannot. Thence home,
and to the Office, where about my letters, and so home to supper, and to
bed, my eyes being bad again; and by this means, the nights, now-a-days,
do become very long to me, longer than I can sleep out.

15th. Up, and to Alderman Backewell's

[Edward Backwell, goldsmith and alderman of the City of London. He
was a man of considerable wealth during the Commonwealth. After the
Restoration he negotiated Charles II.'s principal money
transactions. He was M.P. for Wendover in the parliament of 1679,
and in the Oxford parliament of 1680. According to the writer of
the life in the "Diet. of Nat. Biog. "his heirs did not ultimately
suffer any pecuniary loss by the closure of the Exchequer. Mr.
Hilton Price stated that Backwell removed to Holland in 1676, and
died therein 1679; but this is disproved by the pedigree in
Lipscomb's "Hist. of Bucks," where the date of his death is given
as 1683, as well as by the fact that he sat for Wendover in 1679 and
1680, as stated above.]

and there discoursed with him about the remitting of this L6000 to
Tangier, which he hath promised to do by the first post, and that will
be by Monday next, the 18th, and he and I agreed that I would take
notice of it that so he may be found to have done his best upon the
desire of the Lords Commissioners. From this we went to discourse of
his condition, and he with some vain glory told me that the business
of Sheernesse did make him quite mad, and inde