here
W. Hewer and I to write it over fair; dined at noon, and Mercer with us,
and mighty merry, and then to finish my letter; and it being three o'clock
ere we had done, when I come to Sir W. Batten; he was in a huffe, which I
made light of, but he signed the letter, though he would not go, and liked
the letter well. Sir W. Pen, it seems, he would not stay for it: so,
making slight of Sir W. Pen's putting so much weight upon his hand to Sir
W. Batten, I down to the Tower Wharf, and there got a sculler, and to
White Hall, and there met Lord Bruncker, and he signed it, and so I
delivered it to Mr. Cheving,

[William Chiffinch, pimp to Charles II. and receiver of the secret
pensions paid by the French Court. He succeeded his brother, Thomas
Chiffinch (who died in April, 1666), as Keeper of the King's Private
Closet (see note, vol. v., p. 265). He is introduced by Scott into
his "Peveril of the Peak."]

and he to Sir W. Coventry, in the cabinet, the King and councill being
sitting, where I leave it to its fortune, and I by water home again, and
to my chamber, to even my Journall; and then comes Captain Cocke to me,
and he and I a great deal of melancholy discourse of the times, giving all
over for gone, though now the Parliament will soon finish the Bill for
money. But we fear, if we had it, as matters are now managed, we shall
never make the best of it, but consume it all to no purpose or a bad one.
He being gone, I again to my Journall and finished it, and so to supper
and to bed.

19th. Lay pretty long in bed talking with pleasure with my wife, and then
up and all the morning at my own chamber fitting some Tangier matters
against the afternoon for a meeting. This morning also came Mr. Caesar,
and I heard him on the lute very finely, and my boy begins to play well.
After dinner I carried and set my wife down at her brother's, and then to
Barkeshire-house, where my Lord Chancellor hath been ever since the fire,
but he is not come home yet, so I to Westminster Hall, where the Lords
newly up and the Commons still sitting. Here I met with Mr. Robinson, who
did give me a printed paper wherein he states his pretence to the post
office, and intends to petition the Parliament in it. Thence I to the
Bull-head tavern, where I have not been since Mr. Chetwind and the time of
our club, and here had six bottles of claret filled, and I sent them to
Mrs. Martin, whom I had promised some of my owne, a