rare play to be acted
this week of Sir William Davenant's: the story of Henry the Eighth with
all his wives.

11th. Up and abroad toward the Wardrobe, and going out Mr. Clerke met me
to tell me that Field has a writ against me in this last business of
L30 10s., and that he believes he will get an execution against me this
morning, and though he told me it could not be well before noon, and
that he would stop it at the Sheriff's, yet it is hard to believe with
what fear I did walk and how I did doubt at every man I saw and do start
at the hearing of one man cough behind my neck. I to, the Wardrobe and
there missed Mr. Moore. So to Mr. Holden's and evened all reckonings
there for hats, and then walked to Paul's Churchyard and after a little
at my bookseller's and bought at a shop Cardinall Mazarin's Will in
French. I to the Coffeehouse and there among others had good discourse
with an Iron Merchant, who tells me the great evil of discouraging our
natural manufacture of England in that commodity by suffering the Swede
to bring in three times more than ever they did and our owne Ironworks
be lost, as almost half of them, he says, are already. Then I went and
sat by Mr. Harrington, and some East country merchants, and talking of
the country about Quinsborough, and thereabouts, he told us himself that
for fish, none there, the poorest body, will buy a dead fish, but must
be alive, unless it be in winter; and then they told us the manner of
putting their nets into the water. Through holes made in the thick ice,
they will spread a net of half a mile long; and he hath known a hundred
and thirty and a hundred and seventy barrels of fish taken at one
draught. And then the people come with sledges upon the ice, with snow
at the bottome, and lay the fish in and cover them with snow, and so
carry them to market. And he hath seen when the said fish have been
frozen in the sledge, so as that he hath taken a fish and broke
a-pieces, so hard it hath been; and yet the same fishes taken out of the
snow, and brought into a hot room, will be alive and leap up and down.
Swallows are often brought up in their nets out of the mudd from under
water, hanging together to some twigg or other, dead in ropes, and
brought to the fire will come to life. Fowl killed in December.
(Alderman Barker said) he did buy, and putting into the box under his
sledge, did forget to take them out to eate till Aprill next, and they
then were found there, and were thr