the evening home, setting my aunt at home, and
thence we sent for a joynt of meat to supper, and thence to the office
at 11 o'clock at night, and so home to bed.

19th. Up and to St. James's, where long with Mr. Coventry, Povy, &c., in
their Tangier accounts, but such the folly of that coxcomb Povy that we
could do little in it, and so parted for the time, and I to walk with
Creed and Vernaty in the Physique Garden in St. James's Parke; where I
first saw orange-trees, and other fine trees. So to Westminster Hall,
and thence by water to the Temple, and so walked to the 'Change, and
there find the 'Change full of news from Guinny, some say the Dutch have
sunk our ships and taken our fort, and others say we have done the same
to them. But I find by our merchants that something is done, but is yet
a secret among them. So home to dinner, and then to the office, and
at night with Captain Tayler consulting how to get a little money by
letting him the Elias to fetch masts from New England. So home to supper
and to bed.

20th. Up and by coach to Westminster, and there solicited W. Joyce's
business all the morning, and meeting in the Hall with Mr. Coventry, he
told me how the Committee for Trade have received now all the complaints
of the merchants against the Dutch, and were resolved to report very
highly the wrongs they have done us (when, God knows! it is only our
owne negligence and laziness that hath done us the wrong) and this to be
made to the House to-morrow. I went also out of the Hall with Mrs. Lane
to the Swan at Mrs. Herbert's in the Palace Yard to try a couple of
bands, and did (though I had a mind to be playing the fool with her)
purposely stay but a little while, and kept the door open, and called
the master and mistress of the house one after another to drink and talk
with me, and showed them both my old and new bands. So that as I did
nothing so they are able to bear witness that I had no opportunity there
to do anything. Thence by coach with Sir W. Pen home, calling at the
Temple for Lawes's Psalms, which I did not so much (by being against my
oath) buy as only lay down money till others be bound better for me, and
by that time I hope to get money of the Treasurer of the Navy by bills,
which, according to my oath, shall make me able to do it. At home dined,
and all the afternoon at a Committee of the Chest, and at night comes
my aunt and uncle Wight and Nan Ferrers and supped merrily with me,
my uncle coming i