re desirous of
it, and I am, in my mind, loth to let it go out of my hands, for fear of
a turn). I find my layings-out to come to about L20, which with my fine
will come to about L22 to him that shall hire my house of me.--[Pepys
wished to let his house in Axe Yard now that he had apartments at the
Navy Office.]--To bed.

3rd. Up betimes this morning, and after the barber had done with me,
then to the office, where I and Sir William Pen only did meet and
despatch business. At noon my wife and I by coach to Dr. Clerke's to
dinner: I was very much taken with his lady, a comely, proper woman,
though not handsome; but a woman of the best language I ever heard. Here
dined Mrs. Pierce and her husband. After dinner I took leave to go
to Westminster, where I was at the Privy Seal Office all day, signing
things and taking money, so that I could not do as I had intended, that
is to return to them and go to the Red Bull Playhouse,

[This well-known theatre was situated in St. John's Street on the
site of Red Bull Yard. Pepys went there on March 23rd, 1661, when
he expressed a very poor opinion of the place. T. Carew, in some
commendatory lines on Sir William. Davenant's play, "The just
Italian," 1630, abuses both audiences and actors:--

"There are the men in crowded heaps that throng
To that adulterate stage, where not a tongue
Of th' untun'd kennel can a line repeat
Of serious sense."

There is a token of this house (see "Boyne's Trade Tokens," ed.
Williamson, vol. i., 1889, p. 725).]

but I took coach and went to see whether it was done so or no, and I
found it done. So I returned to Dr. Clerke's, where I found them and my
wife, and by and by took leave and went away home.

4th. To White Hall, where I found my Lord gone with the King by water
to dine at the Tower with Sir J. Robinson,' Lieutenant. I found my Lady
Jemimah--[Lady Jemima Montage, daughter of Lord Sandwich, previously
described as Mrs. Jem.]--at my Lord's, with whom I staid and dined, all
alone; after dinner to the Privy Seal Office, where I did business. So
to a Committee of Parliament (Sir Hen[eage] Finch, Chairman), to give
them an answer to an order of theirs, "that we could not give them any
account of the Accounts of the Navy in the years 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, as
they desire." After that I went and bespoke some linen of Betty Lane
in the Hall, and after that