ose nuts he showed us. Their shells black with age,
and their kernell, upon opening, decayed, but their shell perfectly hard
as ever. And a yew tree he showed us (upon which, he says, the very ivy
was taken up whole about it), which upon cutting with an addes [adze], we
found to be rather harder than the living tree usually is. They say, very
much, but I do not know how hard a yew tree naturally is.

[The same discovery was made in 1789, in digging the Brunswick Dock,
also at Blackwall, and elsewhere in the neighbourhood.]

The armes, they say, were taken up at first whole, about the body, which
is very strange. Thence away by water, and I walked with my Lord Bruncker
home, and there at dinner comes a letter from my Lord Sandwich to tell me
that he would this day be at Woolwich, and desired me to meet him. Which
fearing might have lain in Sir J. Minnes' pocket a while, he sending it
me, did give my Lord Bruncker, his mistress, and I occasion to talk of him
as the most unfit man for business in the world. Though at last
afterwards I found that he was not in this faulty, but hereby I have got a
clear evidence of my Lord Bruncker's opinion of him. My Lord Bruncker
presently ordered his coach to be ready and we to Woolwich, and my Lord
Sandwich not being come, we took a boat and about a mile off met him in
his Catch, and boarded him, and come up with him; and, after making a
little halt at my house, which I ordered, to have my wife see him, we all
together by coach to Mr. Boreman's, where Sir J. Minnes did receive him
very handsomely, and there he is to lie; and Sir J. Minnes did give him on
the sudden, a very handsome supper and brave discourse, my Lord Bruncker,
and Captain Cocke, and Captain Herbert being there, with myself. Here my
Lord did witness great respect to me, and very kind expressions, and by
other occasions, from one thing to another did take notice how I was
overjoyed at first to see the King's letter to his Lordship, and told them
how I did kiss it, and that, whatever he was, I did always love the King.
This my Lord Bruncker did take such notice [of] as that he could not
forbear kissing me before my Lord, professing his finding occasion every
day more and more to love me, and Captain Cocke has since of himself taken
notice of that speech of my Lord then concerning me, and may be of good
use to me. Among other discourse concerning long life, Sir J. Minnes
saying that his great-grandfather wa