so we study how to ease or secure
ourselves. So to walk in the garden with my wife, and then to supper and
to bed. One tells me that, by letter from Holland, the people there are
made to believe that our condition in England is such as they may have
whatever they will ask; and that so they are mighty high, and despise us,
or a peace with us; and there is too much reason for them to do so. The
Dutch fleete are in great squadrons everywhere still about Harwich, and
were lately at Portsmouth; and the last letters say at Plymouth, and now
gone to Dartmouth to destroy our Streights' fleete lately got in thither;
but God knows whether they can do it any hurt, or no, but it was pretty
news come the other day so fast, of the Dutch fleets being in so many
places, that Sir W. Batten at table cried, "By God," says he, "I think the
Devil shits Dutchmen."

20th. Up and to the office, where all the morning, and then towards the
'Change, at noon, in my way observing my mistake yesterday in Mark Lane,
that the woman I saw was not the pretty woman I meant, the line-maker's
wife, but a new-married woman, very pretty, a strong-water seller: and in
going by, to my content, I find that the very pretty daughter at the Ship
tavern, at the end of Billiter Lane, is there still, and in the bar: and,
I believe, is married to him that is new come, and hath new trimmed the
house. Home to dinner, and then to the office, we having dispatched away
Mr. Oviatt to Hull, about our prizes there; and I have wrote a letter of
thanks by him to Lord Bellasses, who had writ to me to offer all his
service for my interest there, but I dare not trust him. In the evening
late walking in the garden with my wife, and then to bed.

21st (Lord's day). Up betimes, and all the morning, and then to dinner
with my wife alone, and then all the afternoon in like manner, in my
chamber, making up my Tangier accounts and drawing a letter, which I have
done at last to my full content, to present to the Lords Commissioners for
Tangier tomorrow; and about seven at night, when finished my letter and
weary, I and my wife and Mercer up by water to Barne Elmes, where we
walked by moonshine, and called at Lambeth, and drank and had cold meat in
the boat, and did eat, and sang, and down home, by almost twelve at night,
very fine and pleasant, only could not sing ordinary songs with the
freedom that otherwise I would. Here Mercer tells me that the pretty maid
of the Ship tavern I