er officers' wives. The Commissioner staid at dinner with me, and
we had a good dinner, better than I would have had, but I saw there was
no helping of it. After dinner the Commissioner and I left the company
and walked in the garden at the Hill-house, which is very pleasant, and
there talked of our businesses and matters of the navy. So to church
again, where quite weary, and so after sermon walked with him to the
yard up and down and the fields, and saw the place designed for the wet
dock. And so to his house, and had a syllabub, and saw his closet, which
come short of what I expected, but there was fine modells of ships in
it indeed, whose worth I could not judge of. At night walked home to
the Hill-house, Mr. Barrow with me, talking of the faults of the yard,
walking in the fields an hour or two, and so home to supper, and so
Captain Cocke and I to bed. This day among other stories he told me how
despicable a thing it is to be a hangman in Poland, although it be a
place of credit. And that, in his time, there was some repairs to be
made of the gallows there, which was very fine of stone; but nobody
could be got to mend it till the Burgomaster, or Mayor of the town, with
all the companies of those trades which were necessary to be used about
those repairs, did go in their habits with flags, in solemn procession
to the place, and there the Burgomaster did give the first blow with the
hammer upon the wooden work; and the rest of the Masters of the Companys
upon the works belonging to their trades; that so workmen might not be
ashamed to be employed upon doing of the gallows' works.

4th. Up by four o'clock in the morning and walked to the Dock, where
Commissioner Pett and I took barge and went to the guardships and
mustered them, finding them but badly manned; thence to the Sovereign,
which we found kept in good order and very clean, which pleased us
well, but few of the officers on board. Thence to the Charles, and were
troubled to see her kept so neglectedly by the boatswain Clements, who I
always took for a very good officer; it is a very brave ship. Thence
to Upnor Castle, and there went up to the top, where there is a fine
prospect, but of very small force; so to the yard, and there mustered
the whole ordinary, where great disorder by multitude of servants and
old decrepid men, which must be remedied. So to all the storehouses
and viewed the stores of all sorts and the hemp, where we found Captain
Cocke's (which he