ons, forks, and sugar box, and being well pleased with seeing
my business done to my mind as to my meeting with people and having my
books ready for me, I home and to my office, and there did business late,
and then home to supper, prayers, and to bed.

31st. At the office all the morning, and after dinner there again,
dispatched first my letters, and then to my accounts, not of the month but
of the whole yeare also, and was at it till past twelve at night, it being
bitter cold; but yet I was well satisfied with my worke, and, above all,
to find myself, by the great blessing of God, worth L1349, by which, as I
have spent very largely, so I have laid up above L500 this yeare above
what I was worth this day twelvemonth. The Lord make me for ever thankful
to his holy name for it! Thence home to eat a little and so to bed. Soon
as ever the clock struck one, I kissed my wife in the kitchen by the
fireside, wishing her a merry new yeare, observing that I believe I was
the first proper wisher of it this year, for I did it as soon as ever the
clock struck one.

So ends the old yeare, I bless God, with great joy to me, not only from my
having made so good a yeare of profit, as having spent L420 and laid up
L540 and upwards; but I bless God I never have been in so good plight as
to my health in so very cold weather as this is, nor indeed in any hot
weather, these ten years, as I am at this day, and have been these four or
five months. But I am at a great losse to know whether it be my hare's
foote, or taking every morning of a pill of turpentine, or my having left
off the wearing of a gowne. My family is, my wife, in good health, and
happy with her; her woman Mercer, a pretty, modest, quiett mayde; her
chambermayde Besse, her cook mayde Jane, the little girl Susan, and my
boy, which I have had about half a yeare, Tom Edwards, which I took from
the King's chappell, and a pretty and loving quiett family I have as any
man in England. My credit in the world and my office grows daily, and I
am in good esteeme with everybody, I think. My troubles of my uncle's
estate pretty well over; but it comes to be but of little profit to us, my
father being much supported by my purse. But great vexations remain upon
my father and me from my brother Tom's death and ill condition, both to
our disgrace and discontent, though no great reason for either. Publique
matters are all in a hurry about a Dutch warr. Our preparations great;
our prov