ed with my mind pretty well at ease. This
evening W. Pen and Sir R. Ford and I met at the first's house to talk of
our prize that is now at last come safe over from Holland, by which I hope
to receive some if not all the benefit of my bargain with W. Batten for my
share in it, which if she had miscarried I should have doubted of my Lady
Batten being left little able to have paid me.

17th. Up betimes and to the office, where all the morning busy, and then
at noon home to dinner, and so again to the office awhile, and then abroad
to the Excize-Office, where I met Mr. Ball, and did receive the paper I
went for; and there fell in talk with him, who, being an old cavalier, do
swear and curse at the present state of things, that we should be brought
to this, that we must be undone and cannot be saved; that the Parliament
is sitting now, and will till midnight, to find how to raise this
L300,000, and he doubts they will not do it so as to be seasonable for the
King: but do cry out against our great men at Court; how it is a fine
thing for a Secretary of State to dance a jigg, and that it was not so
heretofore; and, above all, do curse my Lord of Bristoll, saying the worst
news that ever he heard in his life, or that the Devil could ever bring
us, was this Lord's coming to prayers the other day in the House of Lords,
by which he is coming about again from being a Papist, which will undo
this nation; and he says he ever did say, at the King's first coming in,
that this nation could not be safe while that man was alive. Having done
there, I away towards Westminster, but seeing by the coaches the House to
be up, I stopped at the 'Change (where, I met Mrs. Turner, and did give
her a pair of gloves), and there bought several things for my wife, and so
to my bookseller's, and there looked for Montaigne's Essays,

[This must have been Florio's translation, as Cotton's was not
published until 1685.]

which I heard by my Lord Arlington and Lord Blaney so much commended, and
intend to buy it, but did not now, but home, where at the office did some
business, as much as my eyes would give leave, and so home to supper,
Mercer with us talking and singing, and so to bed. The House, I hear,
have this day concluded upon raising L100,000 of the L300,000 by wine, and
the rest by a poll-[tax], and have resolved to excuse the Church, in
expectation that they will do the more of themselves at this juncture; and
I do hear that Sir W. C