Parliament shall be capable of office. And that the Court are weary of
my Lord Albemarle and Chamberlin. He wishes that my Lord Sandwich had
some good occasion to be abroad this summer which is coming on, and that
my Lord Hinchingbroke were well married, and Sydney had some place at
Court. He pities the poor ministers that are put out, to whom, he says,
the King is beholden for his coming in, and that if any such thing had
been foreseen he had never come in. After this, and much other discourse
of the sea, and breeding young gentlemen to the sea, I went away, and
homeward, met Mr. Creed at my bookseller's in Paul's Church-yard, who
takes it ill my letter last night to Mr. Povy, wherein I accuse him of
the neglect of the Tangier boats, in which I must confess I did not do
altogether like a friend; but however it was truth, and I must own it to
be so, though I fall wholly out with him for it. Thence home and to my
office alone to do business, and read over half of Mr. Bland's discourse
concerning Trade, which (he being no scholler and so knows not the rules
of writing orderly) is very good. So home to supper and to bed, my wife
not being well.... This evening Mr. Gauden sent me, against Christmas,
a great chine of beef and three dozen of tongues. I did give 5s. to the
man that brought it, and half-a-crown to the porters. This day also
the parish-clerk brought the general bill of mortality, which cost me
half-a-crown more.

[The Bills of Mortality for London were first compiled by order of
Thomas Cromwell about 1538, and the keeping of them was commenced by
the Company of Parish Clerks in the great plague year of 1593. The
bills were issued weekly from 1603. The charter of the Parish
Clerks' Company (1611) directs that "each parish clerk shall bring
to the Clerks' Hall weekly a note of all christenings and burials."
Charles I. in 1636 granted permission to the Parish Clerks to have a
printing press and employ a printer in their hall for the purpose of
printing their weekly bills.]

25th (Christmas Day). Up pretty early, leaving my wife not well in
bed, and with my boy walked, it being a most brave cold and dry frosty
morning, and had a pleasant walk to White Hall, where I intended to have
received the Communion with the family, but I came a little too late.
So I walked up into the house and spent my time looking over pictures,
particularly the ships in King Henry the VIIIth'