reducing to a method, to my great satisfaction; and I shall
be glad both for the King's sake and his, that the thing may be put in
practice, and will do my part to promote it. That done, he gone, I to the
Office, where busy till night; and then with comfort to sit with my wife,
and get her to read to me, and so to supper, and to bed, with my mind at
mighty ease.

25th. Up, and by coach with W. Hewer to see W. Coventry; but he gone out,
I to White Hall, and there waited on Lord Sandwich, which I have little
encouragement to do, because of the difficulty of seeing him, and the
little he hath to say to me when I do see him, or to any body else, but
his own idle people about him, Sir Charles Harbord, &c. Thence walked
with him to White Hall, where to the Duke of York; and there the Duke, and
Wren, and I, by appointment in his closet, to read over our letter to the
Office, which he heard, and signed it, and it is to my mind, Mr. Wren
having made it somewhat sweeter to the Board, and yet with all the advice
fully, that I did draw it up with. He [the Duke] said little more to us
now, his head being full of other business; but I do see that he do
continue to put a value upon my advice; and so Mr. Wren and I to his
chamber, and there talked: and he seems to hope that these people, the
Duke of Buckingham and Arlington, will run themselves off of their legs;
they being forced to be always putting the King upon one idle thing or
other, against the easiness of his nature, which he will never be able to
bear, nor they to keep him to, and so will lose themselves. And, for
instance of their little progress, he tells me that my Lord of Ormond is
like yet to carry it, and to continue in his command in Ireland; at least,
they cannot get the better of him yet. But he tells me that the Keeper is
wrought upon, as they say, to give his opinion for the dissolving of the
Parliament, which, he thinks, will undo him in the eyes of the people. He
do not seem to own the hearing or fearing of any thing to be done in the
Admiralty, to the lessening of the Duke of York, though he hears how the
town talk's full of it. Thence I by coach home, and there find my cozen
Roger come to dine with me, and to seal his mortgage for the L500 I lend
him; but he and I first walked to the 'Change, there to look for my uncle
Wight, and get him to dinner with us. So home, buying a barrel of oysters
at my old oyster-woman's, in Gracious Street, but over the way to