The Diary - Samuel Pepys (red white and royal blue hardcover txt) 📗

and there do understand that the business of religion, and the Act against Conventicles, have so taken them up all this morning, and do still, that my Lord Sandwich’s business is not like to come on today, which I am heartily glad of. This law against Conventicles is very severe; but Creed, whom I met here, do tell me that, it being moved that Papists’ meetings might be included, the House was divided upon it, and it was carried in the negative; which will give great disgust to the people, I doubt. Thence with Creed to Hercules Pillars by the Temple again, and there dined he and I all alone, and thence to the King’s house, and there did see Love in a Maze, wherein very good mirth of Lacy, the clown, and Wintersell,4013 the country-knight, his master. Thence to the New Exchange to pay a debt of my wife’s there, and so home, and there to the office and walk in the garden in the dark to ease my eyes, and so home to supper and to bed.

29th. Up, and to my office, where all the morning busy. At noon dined at home, and my clerks with me, and thence I to Whitehall, and there do hear how Sir W. Penn hath delivered in his answer; and the Lords have sent it down to the Commons, but they have not yet read it, nor taken notice of it, so as, I believe, they will by design defer it till they rise, that so he, by lying under an impeachment, may be prevented in his going to sea, which will vex him, and trouble the Duke of York. Did little business with the Duke of York, and then Lord Brouncker and I to the Duke of York’s playhouse, and there saw Love in a Tubb; and, after the play done, I stepped up to Harris’s dressing-room, where I never was, and there I observe much company come to him, and the Witts, to talk, after the play is done, and to assign meetings. Mine was to talk about going down to see The Resolution,4014 and so away, and thence to Westminster Hall, and there met with Mr. G. Montagu, and walked and talked; who tells me that the best fence against the Parliament’s present fury is delay, and recommended it to me, in my friends’ business and my own, if I have any; and is that, that Sir W. Coventry do take, and will secure himself; that the King will deliver up all to the Parliament; and being petitioned the other day by Mr. Brouncker to protect him, with teares in his eyes, the King did say he could not, and bid him shift for himself, at least till the House is up. Thence I away to Whitehall, and there took coach home with a stranger I let into the coach, to club with me for it, he going into London, I set him down at the lower end of Cheapside, and I home, and to Sir W. Penn’s, and there sat, and by and by, it being now about nine o’clock at night, I heard Mercer’s voice, and my boy Tom’s singing in the garden, which pleased me mightily, I longing to see the girl, having not seen her since my wife went; and so into the garden to her and sang, and then home to supper, and mightily pleased with her company, in talking and singing, and so parted, and to bed.

30th. Up, and at the office all the morning. At noon Sir J. Minnes and I to the Dolphin Tavern, there to meet our neighbours, all of the Parish, this being Procession-day, to dine. And did; and much very good discourse; they being, most of them, very able merchants as any in the City: Sir Andrew Rickard, Mr. Vandeputt,4015 Sir John Fredericke, Harrington, and others. They talked with Mr. Mills about the meaning of this day, and the good uses of it; and how heretofore, and yet in several places, they do whip a boy4016 at each place they stop at in their procession. Thence I to the Duke of York’s playhouse, and there saw The Tempest, which still pleases me mightily, and thence to the New Exchange, and then home, and in the way stopped to talk with Mr. Brisband, who gives me an account of the rough usage Sir G. Carteret and his Counsel had the other day, before the Commissioners of Accounts, and what I do believe we shall all of us have, in a greater degree than any he hath had yet with them, before their three years are out, which are not yet begun, nor God knows when they will, this being like to be no session of Parliament, when they now rise. So home, and there took up Mrs. Turner and carried her to Mile End and drank, and so back talking, and so home and to bed, I being mighty cold, this being a mighty cold day, and I had left off my waistcoat three or four days. This evening, coming home in the dusk, I saw and spoke to our Nell, Pain’s daughter, and had I not been very cold I should have taken her to Tower hill para together et toker her. Thus ends this month; my wife in the country, myself full of pleasure and expense; and some trouble for my friends, my Lord Sandwich, by the Parliament, and more for my eyes, which are daily worse and worse, that I dare not write or read almost anything. The Parliament going in a few days to rise; myself so long without accounting now, for seven or eight months, I think, or more, that I know not what condition almost I am in, as to getting or spending for all that time,