e officers of the Company kneeling to him to receive
their Charter. After dinner Dr. Scarborough took some of his friends,
and I went along with them, to see the body alone, which we did, which
was a lusty fellow, a seaman, that was hanged for a robbery. I did touch
the dead body with my bare hand: it felt cold, but methought it was
a very unpleasant sight. It seems one Dillon, of a great family, was,
after much endeavours to have saved him, hanged with a silken halter
this Sessions (of his own preparing), not for honour only, but it seems,
it being soft and sleek, it do slip close and kills, that is, strangles
presently: whereas, a stiff one do not come so close together, and so
the party may live the longer before killed. But all the Doctors at
table conclude, that there is no pain at all in hanging, for that it do
stop the circulation of the blood; and so stops all sense and motion in
an instant. Thence we went into a private room, where I perceive they
prepare the bodies, and there were the kidneys, ureters [&c.], upon
which he read to-day, and Dr. Scarborough upon my desire and the
company's did show very clearly the manner of the disease of the stone
and the cutting and all other questions that I could think of... how the
water [comes] into the bladder through the three skins or coats just as
poor Dr. Jolly has heretofore told me. Thence with great satisfaction
to me back to the Company, where I heard good discourse, and so to the
afternoon Lecture upon the heart and lungs, &c., and that being done we
broke up, took leave, and back to the office, we two, Sir W. Batten, who
dined here also, being gone before. Here late, and to Sir W. Batten's
to speak upon some business, where I found Sir J. Minnes pretty well
fuddled I thought: he took me aside to tell me how being at my Lord
Chancellor's to-day, my Lord told him that there was a Great Seal
passing for Sir W. Pen, through the impossibility of the Comptroller's
duty to be performed by one man; to be as it were joynt-comptroller with
him, at which he is stark mad; and swears he will give up his place,
and do rail at Sir W. Pen the cruellest; he I made shift to encourage
as much as I could, but it pleased me heartily to hear him rail against
him, so that I do see thoroughly that they are not like to be great
friends, for he cries out against him for his house and yard and God
knows what. For my part, I do hope, when all is done, that my following
my business will keep