of the window to escape her
fury. Exasperated at this virago, the neighbours made a "riding,"
i.e. a pedestrian procession, headed by a drum, and accompanied by a
chemise, displayed for a banner. The manual musician sounded the
tune of "You round-headed cuckolds, come dig, come dig!" and nearly
seventy coalheavers, carmen, and porters, adorned with large horns
fastened to their heads, followed. The public seemed highly pleased
with the nature of the punishment, and gave liberally to the
vindicators of injured manhood.--B.]

there to-day for a man, the constable of the town, whose wife beat him.
Here I was with much ado fain to press two watermen to make me a galley,
and so to Woolwich to give order for the dispatch of a ship I have taken
under my care to see dispatched, and orders being so given, I, under
pretence to fetch up the ship, which lay at Grays (the Golden Hand),

[The "Golden Hand" was to have been used for the conveyance of the
Swedish Ambassadors' horses and goods to Holland. In August, 1667,
Frances, widow of Captain Douglas and daughter of Lord Grey,
petitioned the king "for a gift of the prize ship Golden Hand, now
employed in weighing the ships sunk at Chatham, where her husband
lost his life in defence of the ships against the Dutch" ("Calendar
of State Papers," 1667, p. 430)]

did do that in my way, and went down to Gravesend, where I find the Duke
of Albemarle just come, with a great many idle lords and gentlemen, with
their pistols and fooleries; and the bulwarke not able to have stood half
an hour had they come up; but the Dutch are fallen down from the Hope and
Shell-haven as low as Sheernesse, and we do plainly at this time hear the
guns play. Yet I do not find the Duke of Albemarle intends to go thither,
but stays here to-night, and hath, though the Dutch are gone, ordered our
frigates to be brought to a line between the two blockhouses; which I took
then to be a ridiculous thing. So I away into the town and took a captain
or two of our ships (who did give me an account of the proceedings of the
Dutch fleete in the river) to the taverne, and there eat and drank, and I
find the townsmen had removed most of their goods out of the town, for
fear of the Dutch coming up to them; and from Sir John Griffen, that last
night there was not twelve men to be got in the town to defend it: which
the master of the house tells me