hurch, where I have not been these many
weeks before, and there did first find a strange Reader, who could not
find in the Service-book the place for churching women, but was fain to
change books with the clerke: and then a stranger preached, a seeming
able man; but said in his pulpit that God did a greater work in raising
of an oake-tree from an akehorne, than a man's body raising it, at the
last day, from his dust (shewing the possibility of the Resurrection):
which was, methought, a strange saying. At home to dinner, whither
comes and dines with me W. Howe, and by invitation Mr. Harris and Mr.
Banister, most extraordinary company both, the latter for musique of all
sorts, the former for everything: here we sang, and Banister played on
the theorbo, and afterwards Banister played on his flageolet, and I had
very good discourse with him about musique, so confirming some of my
new notions about musique that it puts me upon a resolution to go on
and make a scheme and theory of musique not yet ever made in the world.
Harris do so commend my wife's picture of Mr. Hales's, that I shall have
him draw Harris's head; and he hath also persuaded me to have Cooper
draw my wife's, which, though it cost L30, yet I will have done. Thus
spent the afternoon most deliciously, and then broke up and walked
with them as far as the Temple, and there parted, and I took coach to
Westminster, but there did nothing, meeting nobody that I had a mind to
speak with, and so home, and there find Mr. Pelling, and then also comes
Mrs. Turner, and supped and talked with us, and so to bed. I do hear
by several that Sir W. Pen's going to sea do dislike the Parliament
mightily, and that they have revived the Committee of Miscarriages to
find something to prevent it; and that he being the other day with the
Duke of Albemarle to ask his opinion touching his going to sea, the
Duchess overheard and come in to him, and asks W. Pen how he durst
have the confidence to offer to go to sea again, to the endangering the
nation, when he knew himself such a coward as he was, which, if true, is
very severe.

30th. Up betimes, and so to the office, there to do business till about
to o'clock, and then out with my wife and Deb. and W. Hewer by coach to
Common-garden Coffee-house, where by appointment I was to meet Harris;
which I did, and also Mr. Cooper, the great painter, and Mr. Hales: and
thence presently to Mr. Cooper's house, to see some of his work, which
is all in