our Victualling business, that thereby I might draw up instructions for
the Surveyours and that we might be doing something to earne our money.
This done I late to bed. Among other things it pleased me to have it
demonstrated, that a Purser without professed cheating is a professed
loser, twice as much as he gets.

23rd. Up betimes, and so, being trimmed, I to get papers ready against
Sir H. Cholmly come to me by appointment, he being newly come over from
Tangier. He did by and by come, and we settled all matters about
his money, and he is a most satisfied man in me, and do declare his
resolution to give me 200 per annum. It continuing to be a great frost,
which gives us hope for a perfect cure of the plague, he and I to walk
in the parke, and there discoursed with grief of the calamity of the
times; how the King's service is performed, and how Tangier is governed
by a man, who, though honourable, yet do mind his ways of getting
and little else compared, which will never make the place flourish.
I brought him and had a good dinner for him, and there come by chance
Captain Cuttance, who tells me how W. Howe is laid by the heels, and
confined to the Royall Katharine, and his things all seized and how,
also, for a quarrel, which indeed the other night my Lord told me,
Captain Ferrers, having cut all over the back of another of my Lord's
servants, is parted from my Lord. I sent for little Mrs. Frances Tooker,
and after they were gone I sat dallying with her an hour, doing what I
would with my hands about her. And a very pretty creature it is. So in
the evening to the office, where late writing letters, and at my lodging
later writing for the last twelve days my Journall and so to bed. Great
expectation what mischief more the French will do us, for we must fall
out. We in extraordinary lacke of money and everything else to go to
sea next year. My Lord Sandwich is gone from the fleete yesterday toward
Oxford.

24th. Up, and after doing some business at the office, I to London, and
there, in my way, at my old oyster shop in Gracious Streete, bought two
barrels of my fine woman of the shop, who is alive after all the
plague, which now is the first observation or inquiry we make at London
concerning everybody we knew before it. So to the 'Change, where very
busy with several people, and mightily glad to see the 'Change so full,
and hopes of another abatement still the next week. Off the 'Change I
went home with Sir G. Smith t