tells us my Lord Treasurer is ill and
cannot speak with us now. Thence away, Sir W. Pen and I and Mr. Lewes,
who come hither after us, and Mr. Gawden in the last man's coach. Set me
down by the Poultry, and I to Sir Robert Viner's, and there had my account
stated and took it home to review. So home to the office, and there late
writing out something, having been a little at Sir W. Batten's to talk,
and there vexed to see them give order for Hogg's further abroad, and so
home and to bed.

26th. Up, and by coach with Sir W. Batten and [Sir] W. Pen to White Hall,
and there saw the Duke of Albemarle, who is not well, and do grow crazy.
Thence I to St. James's, to meet Sir G. Carteret, and did, and Lord
Berkely, to get them (as we would have done the Duke of Albemarle) to the
meeting of the Lords of Appeale in the business of one of our prizes.
With them to the meeting of the Guinny Company, and there staid, and went
with Lord Berkely. While I was waiting for him in the Matted Gallery, a
young man was most finely working in Indian inke the great picture of the
King and Queen sitting,--[Charles I. and Henrietta Maria.]--by Van Dyke;
and did it very finely. Thence to Westminster Hall to hear our cause, but
[it] did not come before them to-day, so went down and walked below in the
Hall, and there met with Ned Pickering, who tells me the ill newes of his
nephew Gilbert, who is turned a very rogue, and then I took a turn with
Mr. Evelyn, with whom I walked two hours, till almost one of the clock:
talking of the badness of the Government, where nothing but wickedness,
and wicked men and women command the King: that it is not in his nature to
gainsay any thing that relates to his pleasures; that much of it arises
from the sickliness of our Ministers of State, who cannot be about him as
the idle companions are, and therefore he gives way to the young rogues;
and then, from the negligence of the Clergy, that a Bishop shall never be
seen about him, as the King of France hath always: that the King would
fain have some of the same gang to be Lord Treasurer, which would be yet
worse, for now some delays are put to the getting gifts of the King, as
that whore my Lady Byron,

[Eleanor, daughter of Robert Needham, Viscount Kilmurrey, and widow
of Peter Warburton, became in 1644 the second wife of John Byron,
first Lord Byron. Died 1663.--B.]

who had been, as he called it, the King's seventeenth whore abroad, did
not