e things for my flageolets. So to the Old Exchange, and
then home to dinner, and so, Mercer dining with us, I took my wife and her
and Deb. out to Unthanke's, while I to White Hall to the Commissioners of
the Treasury, and so back to them and took them out to Islington, where we
met with W. Joyce and his wife and boy, and there eat and drank, and a
great deal of his idle talk, and so we round by Hackney home, and so to
sing a little in the garden, and then to bed.
4th. Up, and to my office a little, and then to White Hall about a
Committee for Tangier at my Lord Arlington's, where, by Creed's being out
of town, I have the trouble given me of drawing up answers to the
complaints of the Turks of Algiers, and so I have all the papers put into
my hand. Here till noon, and then back to the Office, where sat a little,
and then to dinner, and presently to the office, where come to me my Lord
Bellassis, Lieutenant-Colonell Fitzgerald, newly come from Tangier, and
Sir Arthur Basset, and there I received their informations, and so, they
being gone, I with my clerks and another of Lord Brouncker's, Seddon, sat
up till two in the morning, drawing up my answers and writing them fair,
which did trouble me mightily to sit up so long, because of my eyes.
5th. So to bed about two o'clock, and then up about seven and to White
Hall, where read over my report to Lord Arlington and Berkeley, and then
afterward at the Council Board with great good liking, but, Lord! how it
troubled my eyes, though I did not think I could have done it, but did do
it, and was not very bad afterward. So home to dinner, and thence out to
the Duke of York's playhouse, and there saw "The Guardian;" formerly the
same, I find, that was called "Cutter of Coleman Street;" a silly play.
And thence to Westminster Hall, where I met Fitzgerald; and with him to a
tavern, to consider of the instructions for Sir Thomas Allen, against his
going to Algiers; he and I being designed to go down to Portsmouth by the
Council's order, and by and by he and I went to the Duke of York, who
orders me to go down to-morrow morning. So I away home, and there bespeak
a coach; and so home and to bed, my wife being abroad with the Mercers
walking in the fields, and upon the water.
6th. Waked betimes, and my wife, at an hour's warning, is resolved to go
with me, which pleases me, her readiness. But, before ready, comes a
letter from Fitzgerald, that he is seized upon last night by a
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