n down to my office to looke in a darke room with my glasses
and tube, and most excellently things appeared indeed beyond imagination.
This was our worke all the afternoon trying the several glasses and
several objects, among others, one of my plates, where the lines appeared
so very plain that it is not possible to thinke how plain it was done.
Thence satisfied exceedingly with all this we home and to discourse many
pretty things, and so staid out the afternoon till it began to be dark,
and then they away and I to Sir W. Batten, where the Lieutenant of the
Tower was, and Sir John Minnes, and the newes I find is no more or less
than what I had heard before; only that our Blue squadron, it seems, was
pursued the most of the time, having more ships, a great many, than its
number allotted to her share. Young Seamour is killed, the only captain
slain. The Resolution burned; but, as they say, most of her [crew] and
commander saved. This is all, only we keep the sea, which denotes a
victory, or at least that we are not beaten; but no great matters to brag
of, God knows. So home to supper and to bed.

30th. Up, and did some business in my chamber, then by and by comes my
boy's Lute-Master, and I did direct him hereafter to begin to teach him to
play his part on the Theorbo, which he will do, and that in a little time
I believe. So to the office, and there with Sir W. Warren, with whom I
have spent no time a good while. We set right our business of the
Lighters, wherein I thinke I shall get L100. At noon home to dinner and
there did practise with Mercer one of my new tunes that I have got Dr.
Childe to set me a base to and it goes prettily. Thence abroad to pay
several debts at the end of the month, and so to Sir W. Coventry, at St.
James's, where I find him in his new closett, which is very fine, and well
supplied with handsome books. I find him speak very slightly of the late
victory: dislikes their staying with the fleete up their coast, believing
that the Dutch will come out in fourteen days, and then we with our
unready fleete, by reason of some of the ships being maymed, shall be in
bad condition to fight them upon their owne coast: is much dissatisfied
with the great number of men, and their fresh demands of twenty-four
victualling ships, they going out but the other day as full as they could
stow. I asked him whether he did never desire an account of the number of
supernumeraries, as I have done several ways, wi