with little trouble on
this score, but when he died at the age of seventy a nest of seven stones
was found in his left kidney.

["June 10th, 1669. I went this evening to London, to carry Mr.
Pepys to my brother Richard, now exceedingly afflicted with the
stone, who had been successfully cut, and carried the stone, as big
as a tennis ball, to show him and encourage his resolution to go
thro' the operation."--Evelyn's Diary.]

In June, 1659, Pepys accompanied Sir Edward Montage in the "Naseby," when
the Admiral of the Baltic Fleet and Algernon Sidney went to the Sound as
joint commissioners. It was then that Montage corresponded with Charles
II., but he had to be very secret in his movements on account of the
suspicions of Sidney. Pepys knew nothing of what was going on, as he
confesses in the Diary:

"I do from this raise an opinion of him, to be one of the most
secret men in the world, which I was not so convinced of before."

On Pepys's return to England he obtained an appointment in the office of
Mr., afterwards Sir George Downing, who was one of the Four Tellers of the
Receipt of the Exchequer. He was clerk to Downing when he commenced his
diary on January 1st, 1660, and then lived in Axe Yard, close by King
Street, Westminster, a place on the site of which was built Fludyer
Street. This, too, was swept away for the Government offices in 1864-65.
His salary was L50 a year. Downing invited Pepys to accompany him to
Holland, but he does not appear to have been very pressing, and a few days
later in this same January he got him appointed one of the Clerks of the
Council, but the recipient of the favour does not appear to have been very
grateful. A great change was now about to take place in Pepys's fortunes,
for in the following March he was made secretary to Sir Edward Montage in
his expedition to bring about the Restoration of Charles II., and on the
23rd he went on board the "Swiftsure" with Montage. On the 30th they
transferred themselves to the "Naseby." Owing to this appointment of
Pepys we have in the Diary a very full account of the daily movements of
the fleet until, events having followed their natural course, Montage had
the honour of bringing Charles II. to Dover, where the King was received
with great rejoicing. Several of the ships in the fleet had names which
were obnoxious to Royalists, and on the 23rd May the King came on board
the "Naseby" and altered th