r that time should suffer in the same manner
without consent of the Senate: which he compared to the proceeding of the
Long Parliament against my Lord Strafford. He said the greatest part of
the lay magistrates in England were Puritans, and would not do justice;
and the Bishopps, their powers were so taken away and lessened, that they
could not exercise the power they ought. He told the King and the ladies
plainly, speaking of death and of the skulls and bones of dead men and
women,
[The preacher appears to have had the grave scene in "Hamlet" in
his mind, as he gives the same illustration of Alexander as Hamlet
does.]
how there is no difference; that nobody could tell that of the great
Marius or Alexander from a pyoneer; nor, for all the pains the ladies take
with their faces, he that should look in a charnels-house could not
distinguish which was Cleopatra's, or fair Rosamond's, or Jane Shoare's.
Thence by water home. After dinner to the office, thence with my wife to
see my father and discourse how he finds Tom's matters, which he do very
ill, and that he finds him to have been so negligent, that he used to
trust his servants with cutting out of clothes, never hardly cutting out
anything himself; and, by the abstract of his accounts, we find him to owe
above L290, and to be coming to him under L200. Thence home with my wife,
it being very dirty on foot, and bought some fowl in Gracious. Streets and
some oysters against our feast to-morrow. So home, and after at the
office a while, home to supper and to bed.
26th. Up very betimes and to my office, and there read over some papers
against a meeting by and by at this office of Mr. Povy, Sir W. Rider,
Creed, and Vernaty, and Mr. Gauden about my Lord Peterborough's accounts
for Tangier, wherein we proceeded a good way; but, Lord! to see how
ridiculous Mr. Povy is in all he says or do; like a man not more fit for
to be in such employments as he is, and particularly that of Treasurer
(paying many and very great sums without the least written order) as he is
to be King of England, and seems but this day, after much discourse of
mine, to be sensible of that part of his folly, besides a great deal more
in other things. This morning in discourse Sir W. Rider [said], that he
hath kept a journals of his life for almost these forty years, even to
this day and still do, which pleases me mightily. That being done Sir J.
Minnes and I sat all the morning, an
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