the Chancellor did, as
every body else, speak well of me the other day, but yet was, at the
Committee for Tangier, angry that I should offer to suffer a bill of
exchange to be protested. So my Lord did bid me take heed, for that I
might easily suppose I could not want enemies, no more than others. In
all he speaks with the greatest trust and love and confidence in what I
say or do, that a man can do. After this discourse ended we sat down to
dinner and mighty merry, among other things, at the Bill brought into the
House to make it felony to break bulke, which, as my Lord says well, will
make that no prizes shall be taken, or, if taken, shall be sunke after
plundering; and the Act for the method of gathering this last L1,250,000
now voted, and how paid wherein are several strange imperfections. After
dinner my Lord by a ketch down to Erith, where the Bezan was, it blowing
these last two days and now both night and day very hard southwardly, so
that it has certainly drove the Dutch off the coast. My Lord being gone I
to the office, and there find Captain Ferrers, who tells me his wife is
come to town to see him, having not seen him since 15 weeks ago at his
first going to sea last. She is now at a Taverne and stays all night, so
I was obliged to give him my house and chamber to lie in, which he with
great modesty and after much force took, and so I got Mr. Evelyn's coach
to carry her thither, and the coach coming back, I with Mr. Evelyn to
Deptford, where a little while with him doing a little business, and so in
his coach back again to my lodgings, and there sat with Mrs. Ferrers two
hours, and with my little girle, Mistress Frances Tooker, and very
pleasant. Anon the Captain comes, and then to supper very merry, and so I
led them to bed. And so to bed myself, having seen my pretty little girle
home first at the next door.

26th. Up, and, leaving my guests to make themselves ready, I to the
office, and thither comes Sir Jer. Smith and Sir Christopher Mings to see
me, being just come from Portsmouth and going down to the Fleete. Here I
sat and talked with them a good while and then parted, only Sir
Christopher Mings and I together by water to the Tower; and I find him a
very witty well-spoken fellow, and mighty free to tell his parentage,
being a shoemaker's son, to whom he is now going, and I to the 'Change,
where I hear how the French have taken two and sunk one of our
merchant-men in the Streights, and carried