late to
do any thing at the Council. So by coach to my periwigg maker's and
tailor's, and so home, where I find my wife with her flageolet master,
which I wish she would practise, and so to the office, and then to Sir W.
Batten's, and then to Sir W. Pen's, talking and spending time in vain a
little while, and then home up to my chamber, and so to supper and to bed,
vexed at two or three things, viz. that my wife's watch proves so bad as
it do; the ill state of the office; and Kingdom's business; at the charge
which my mother's death for mourning will bring me when all paid.

4th. Up, and going down found Jervas the barber with a periwigg which I
had the other day cheapened at Westminster, but it being full of nits, as
heretofore his work used to be, I did now refuse it, having bought
elsewhere. So to the office till noon, busy, and then (which I think I
have not done three times in my life) left the board upon occasion of a
letter of Sir W. Coventry, and meeting Balty at my house I took him with
me by water, and to the Duke of Albemarle to give him an account of the
business, which was the escaping of some soldiers for the manning of a few
ships now going out with Harman to the West Indies, which is a sad
consideration that at the very beginning of the year and few ships abroad
we should be in such want of men that they do hide themselves, and swear
they will not go to be killed and have no pay. I find the Duke of
Albemarle at dinner with sorry company, some of his officers of the Army;
dirty dishes, and a nasty wife at table, and bad meat, of which I made but
an ill dinner. Pretty to hear how she talked against Captain Du Tell, the
Frenchman, that the Prince and her husband put out the last year; and how,
says she, the Duke of York hath made him, for his good services, his
Cupbearer; yet he fired more shot into the Prince's ship, and others of
the King's ships, than of the enemy. And the Duke of Albemarle did
confirm it, and that somebody in the fight did cry out that a little
Dutchman, by his ship, did plague him more than any other; upon which they
were going to order him to be sunk, when they looked and found it was Du
Tell, who, as the Duke of Albemarle says, had killed several men in
several of our ships. He said, but for his interest, which he knew he had
at Court, he had hanged him at the yard's-arm, without staying for a
Court-martiall. One Colonel Howard, at the table, magnified the Duke of
Albemarle's