shall be able to oppose them; but do cry
out of the falling back of the seamen, few standing by them, and those
with much faintness. The like they write from Portsmouth, and their
letters this post are worth reading. Sir H. Cholmly come to me this day,
and tells me the Court is as mad as ever; and that the night the Dutch
burned our ships the King did sup with my Lady Castlemayne, at the
Duchess of Monmouth's, and there were all mad in hunting of a poor moth.
All the Court afraid of a Parliament; but he thinks nothing can save us
but the King's giving up all to a Parliament. Busy at the office all
the afternoon, and did much business to my great content. In the evening
sent for home, and there I find my Lady Pen and Mrs. Lowther, and Mrs.
Turner and my wife eating some victuals, and there I sat and laughed
with them a little, and so to the office again, and in the evening
walked with my wife in the garden, and did give Sir W. Pen at his
lodgings (being just come from Deptford from attending the dispatch of
the fire-ships there) an account of what passed the other day at Council
touching Commissioner Pett, and so home to supper and to bed.

22nd. Up, and to my office, where busy, and there comes Mrs. Daniel...
At the office I all the morning busy. At noon home to dinner, where Mr.
Lewes Phillips, by invitation of my wife, comes, he coming up to town
with her in the coach this week, and she expected another gentleman, a
fellow-traveller, and I perceive the feast was for him, though she do
not say it, but by some mistake he come not, so there was a good dinner
lost. Here we had the two Mercers, and pretty merry. Much talk with Mr.
Phillips about country business, among others that there is no way for
me to purchase any severall lands in Brampton, or making any severall
that is not so, without much trouble and cost, and, it may be, not do
it neither, so that there is no more ground to be laid to our Brampton
house. After dinner I left them, and to the office, and thence to Sir W.
Pen's, there to talk with Mrs. Lowther, and by and by we hearing Mercer
and my boy singing at my house, making exceeding good musique, to the
joy of my heart, that I should be the master of it, I took her to my
office and there merry a while, and then I left them, and at the office
busy all the afternoon, and sleepy after a great dinner. In the evening
come Captain Hart and Haywood to me about the six merchant-ships now
taken up for men-of-war; and