nt for the
Board to pass to-morrow, if I can get them, for the clearing all my
imprest bills, which if I can do, will be to my very good satisfaction.
Having done this, then to supper and to bed.

18th. Up, and to the office, where we sat all the morning. The waters so
high in the roads, by the late rains, that our letters come not in till
to-day, and now I understand that my father is got well home, but had a
painful journey of it. At noon with Lord Bruncker to St. Ellen's, where
the master of the late Pope's Head Taverne is now set up again, and there
dined at Sir W. Warren's cost, a very good dinner. Here my Lord Bruncker
proffered to carry me and my wife into a play at Court to-night, and to
lend me his coach home, which tempted me much; but I shall not do it.
Thence rose from table before dinner ended, and homewards met my wife, and
so away by coach towards Lovett's (in the way wondering at what a good
pretty wench our Barker makes, being now put into good clothes, and
fashionable, at my charge; but it becomes her, so that I do not now think
much of it, and is an example of the power of good clothes and dress),
where I stood godfather. But it was pretty, that, being a Protestant, a
man stood by and was my Proxy to answer for me. A priest christened it,
and the boy's name is Samuel. The ceremonies many, and some foolish. The
priest in a gentleman's dress, more than my owne; but is a Capuchin, one
of the Queene-mother's priests. He did give my proxy and the woman proxy
(my Lady Bills, absent, had a proxy also) good advice to bring up the
child, and, at the end, that he ought never to marry the child nor the
godmother, nor the godmother the child or the godfather: but, which is
strange, they say that the mother of the child and the godfather may
marry. By and by the Lady Bills come in, a well-bred but crooked woman.
The poor people of the house had good wine, and a good cake; and she a
pretty woman in her lying-in dress. It cost me near 40s. the whole
christening: to midwife 20s., nurse 10s., mayde 2s. 6d., and the coach 5s.
I was very well satisfied with what I have done, and so home and to the
office, and thence to Sir W. Batten's, and there hear how the business of
buying off the Chimney-money is passed in the House; and so the King to be
satisfied some other way, and the King supplied with the money raised by
this purchasing off of the chimnies. So home, mightily pleased in mind
that I have got my bills