e a newly-married couple.]--So I to bed.

4th. To Westminster Hall, where it was full term. Here all the morning,
and at noon to my Lord Crew's, where one Mr. Tempter (an ingenious man
and a person of honour he seems to be) dined; and, discoursing of
the nature of serpents, he told us some that in the waste places of
Lancashire do grow to a great bigness, and that do feed upon larks,
which they take thus: They observe when the lark is soared to the
highest, and do crawl till they come to be just underneath them; and
there they place themselves with their mouths uppermost, and there,
as is conceived, they do eject poyson up to the bird; for the bird do
suddenly come down again in its course of a circle, and falls directly
into the mouth of the serpent; which is very strange. He is a great
traveller; and, speaking of the tarantula, he says that all the harvest
long (about which times they are most busy) there are fidlers go up and
down the fields every where, in expectation of being hired by those that
are stung. Thence to the office, where late, and so to my chamber and
then to bed, my mind a little troubled how to put things in order to my
advantage in the office in readiness to the Duke's orders lately sent to
us, and of which we are to treat at the office to-morrow morning. This
afternoon, going into the office, one met me and did serve a subpoena
upon me for one Field, whom we did commit to prison the other day for
some ill words he did give the office. The like he had for others, but
we shall scour him for it.

5th. Early at the office. Sir G. Carteret, the two Sir Williams and
myself all alone reading of the Duke's institutions for the settlement
of our office, whereof we read as much as concerns our own duties, and
left the other officers for another time. I did move several things for
my purpose, and did ease my mind. At noon Sir W. Pen dined with me, and
after dinner he and I and my wife to the Theatre, and went in, but being
very early we went out again to the next door, and drank some Rhenish
wine and sugar, and so to the House again, and there saw "Rule a Wife
and have a Wife" very well done. And here also I did look long upon my
Lady Castlemaine, who, notwithstanding her late sickness, continues a
great beauty. Home and supped with Sir W. Pen and played at cards with
him, and so home and to bed, putting some cataplasm to my.... which
begins to swell again.

6th. At my musique practice, and so into my cella