none capable
of preferment or employment in the State, but who have been loyall and
constant to the King and Church; which will be fatal to a great many,
and makes me doubt lest I myself, with all my innocence during the late
times, should be brought in, being employed in the Exchequer; but, I
hope, God will provide for me. This day the new Theatre Royal begins to
act with scenes the Humourous Lieutenant, but I have not time to see it,
nor could stay to see my Lady Jemimah lately come to town, and who was
here in the house, but dined above with her grandmother. But taking my
wife at my brother's home by coach, and the officers being at Deptford
at a Pay we had no office, but I took my wife by water and so spent the
evening, and so home with great pleasure to supper, and then to bed.

8th. Up very early and to my office, there preparing letters to my
father of great import in the settling of our affairs, and putting him
upon a way [of] good husbandry, I promising to make out of my own purse
him up to L50 per annum, till either by my uncle Thomas's death or the
fall of the Wardrobe place he be otherwise provided. That done I by
water to the Strand, and there viewed the Queen-Mother's works at
Somersett House, and thence to the new playhouse, but could not get in
to see it. So to visit my Lady Jemimah, who is grown much since I saw
her; but lacks mightily to be brought into the fashion of the court
to set her off: Thence to the Temple, and there sat till one o'clock
reading at Playford's in Dr. Usher's 'Body of Divinity' his discourse of
the Scripture, which is as much, I believe, as is anywhere said by any
man, but yet there is room to cavill, if a man would use no faith to the
tradition of the Church in which he is born, which I think to be as good
an argument as most is brought for many things, and it may be for that
among others. Thence to my brother's, and there took up my wife and
Ashwell to the Theatre Royall, being the second day of its being opened.
The house is made with extraordinary good contrivance, and yet hath some
faults, as the narrowness of the passages in and out of the Pitt, and
the distance from the stage to the boxes, which I am confident cannot
hear; but for all other things it is well, only, above all, the musique
being below, and most of it sounding under the very stage, there is no
hearing of the bases at all, nor very well of the trebles, which sure
must be mended. The play was "The Humerous Lieut