o the
Duke of York about the state of the things of the Navy, for want of money,
though I doubt it will be to little purpose. After dinner I abroad by
coach to Kate Joyce's, where the jury did sit where they did before, about
her husband's death, and their verdict put off for fourteen days longer,
at the suit of somebody, under pretence of the King; but it is only to get
money out of her to compound the matter. But the truth is, something they
will make out of Stillingfleete's sermon, which may trouble us, he
declaring, like a fool, in his pulpit, that he did confess that his losses
in the world did make him do what he did. This do vex me to see how
foolish our Protestant Divines are, while the Papists do make it the duty
of Confessor to be secret, or else nobody would confess their sins to
them. All being put off for to-day, I took my leave of Kate, who is
mightily troubled at it for her estate sake, not for her husband; for her
sorrow for that, I perceive, is all over. I home, and, there to my office
busy till the evening, and then home, and there my wife and Deb. and I and
Betty Turner, I employed in the putting new titles to my books, which we
proceeded on till midnight, and then being weary and late to bed.

5th. Up, and I to Captain Cocke's, where he and I did discourse of our
business that we are to go about to the Commissioners of Accounts about
our prizes, and having resolved to conceal nothing but to confess the
truth, the truth being likely to do us most good, we parted, and I to
White Hall, where missing of the Commissioners of the Treasury, I to the
Commissioners of Accounts, where I was forced to stay two hours before I
was called in, and when come in did take an oath to declare the truth to
what they should ask me, which is a great power; I doubt more than the Act
do, or as some say can, give them, to force a man to swear against
himself; and so they fell to enquire about the business of prize-goods,
wherein I did answer them as well as I could, answer them in everything
the just truth, keeping myself to that. I do perceive at last, that, that
they did lay most like a fault to me was, that I did buy goods upon my
Lord Sandwich's declaring that it was with the King's allowance, and my
believing it, without seeing the King's allowance, which is a thing I will
own, and doubt not to justify myself in. That that vexed me most was,
their having some watermen by, to witness my saying that they were rogues