Diary, February 1667/68 | Page 9

home, and busy late at the office, and then home to supper and to bed.
My wife well pleased with my sister's match, and designing how to be
merry at their marriage. And I am well at ease in my mind to think that
that care will be over. This night calling at the Temple, at the Auditor's,
his man told me that he heard that my account must be brought to the
view of the Commissioners of Tangier before it can be passed, which
though I know no hurt in it, yet it troubled me lest there should be any
or any designed by them who put this into the head of the Auditor, I
suppose Auditor Beale, or Creed, because they saw me carrying my
account another way than by them.

9th (Lord's day). Up, and at my chamber all the morning and the office
doing business, and also reading a little of "L'escholle des filles," which
is a mighty lewd book, but yet not amiss for a sober man once to read
over to inform himself in the villainy of the world. At noon home to
dinner, where by appointment Mr. Pelting come and with him three
friends, Wallington, that sings the good base, and one Rogers, and a
gentleman, a young man, his name Tempest, who sings very well
indeed, and understands anything in the world at first sight. After
dinner we into our dining-room, and there to singing all the afternoon.
(By the way, I must remember that Pegg Pen was brought to bed
yesterday of a girl; and, among other things, if I have not already set it
down, that hardly ever was remembered such a season for the smallpox
as these last two months have been, people being seen all up and down
the streets, newly come out after the smallpox.) But though they sang
fine things, yet I must confess that I did take no pleasure in it, or very
little, because I understood not the words, and with the rests that the
words are set, there is no sense nor understanding in them though they
be English, which makes me weary of singing in that manner, it being
but a worse sort of instrumental musick. We sang until almost night,

and drank mighty good store of wine, and then they parted, and I to my
chamber, where I did read through "L'escholle des filles," a lewd book,
but what do no wrong once to read for information sake . . . . And after
I had done it I burned it, that it might not be among my books to my
shame, and so at night to supper and to bed.

10th. Up, and by coach to Westminster, and there made a visit to Mr.
Godolphin, at his chamber; and I do find him a very pretty and able
person, a man of very fine parts, and of infinite zeal to my Lord
Sandwich; and one that says he is, he believes, as wise and able a
person as any prince in the world hath. He tells me that he meets with
unmannerly usage by Sir Robert Southwell, in Portugall, who would
sign with him in his negociations there, being a forward young man:
but that my Lord mastered him in that point, it being ruled for my Lord
here, at a hearing of a Committee of the Council. He says that if my
Lord can compass a peace between Spain and Portugall, and hath the
doing of it and the honour himself, it will be a thing of more honour
than ever any man had, and of as much advantage. Thence to
Westminster Hall, where the Hall mighty full: and, among other things,
the House begins to sit to- day, and the King come. But, before the
King's coming, the House of Commons met; and upon information
given them of a Bill intended to be brought in, as common report said,
for Comprehension, they did mightily and generally inveigh against it,
and did vote that the King should be desired by the House (and the
message delivered by the Privy-counsellers of the House) that the laws
against breakers of the Act of Uniformity should be put in execution:
and it was moved in the House that, if any people had a mind to bring
any new laws into the House, about religion, they might come, as a
proposer of new laws did in Athens, with ropes about their necks. By
and by the King comes to the Lords' House, and there tells them of his
league with Holland, and the necessity of a fleete, and his debts; and,
therefore, want of money; and his desire that they would think of some
way to bring in all his Protestant subjects