Diary, Jul/Aug 1663 | Page 5

of this doing, for he
hath enough for it; but that he gives them liberty to say and think what
they will of him, so they do not demand the reason of his leaving her,
being resolved never to have her, but the reason desires and resolves
not to give. Thence by water with Sir W. Batten to Trinity House, there
to dine with him, which we did; and after dinner we fell talking, Sir J.
Minnes, Mr. Batten and I; Mr. Batten telling us of a late triall of Sir
Charles Sydly the other day, before my Lord Chief Justice Foster and
the whole bench, for his debauchery a little while since at Oxford
Kate's,
[The details in the original are very gross. Dr. Johnson relates the story
in the "Lives of the Poets," in his life of Sackville, Lord Dorset

"Sackville, who was then Lord Buckhurst, with Sir Charles Sedley and
Sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock, in Bow Street, by Covent
Garden, and going into the balcony exposed themselves to the populace
in very indecent postures. At last, as they grew warmer, Sedley stood
forth naked, and harangued the populace in such profane language, that
the publick indignation was awakened; the crowd attempted to force
the door, and being repulsed, drove in the performers with stones, and
broke the windows of the house. For this misdemeanour they were
indicted, and Sedley was fined five hundred pounds; what was the
sentence of the others is not known. Sedley employed [Henry]
Killigrew and another to procure a remission from the King, but (mark
the friendship of the dissolute!) they begged the fine for themselves,
and exacted it to the last groat." The woman known as Oxford Kate
appears to have kept the notorious Cock Tavern in Bow Street at this
date.]
coming in open day into the Balcone and showed his nakedness, . . . .
and abusing of scripture and as it were from thence preaching a
mountebank sermon from the pulpit, saying that there he had to sell
such a powder as should make all the [women] in town run after him,
1000 people standing underneath to see and hear him, and that being
done he took a glass of wine . . . . and then drank it off, and then took
another and drank the King's health. It seems my Lord and the rest of
the judges did all of them round give him a most high reproof; my Lord
Chief justice saying, that it was for him, and such wicked wretches as
he was, that God's anger and judgments hung over us, calling him
sirrah many times. It's said they have bound him to his good behaviour
(there being no law against him for it) in L5000. It being told that my
Lord Buckhurst was there, my Lord asked whether it was that
Buckhurst that was lately tried for robbery; and when answered Yes, he
asked whether he had so soon forgot his deliverance at that time, and
that it would have more become him to have been at his prayers
begging God's forgiveness, than now running into such courses
again . . . . Thence home, and my clerks being gone by my leave to see
the East India ships that are lately come home, I staid all alone within
my office all the afternoon. This day I hear at dinner that Don John of
Austria, since his flight out of Portugall, is dead of his wounds:--[not
true]--so there is a great man gone, and a great dispute like to be ended

for the crown of Spayne, if the King should have died before him. I
received this morning a letter from my wife, brought by John Gower to
town, wherein I find a sad falling out between my wife and my father
and sister and Ashwell upon my writing to my father to advise Pall not
to keep Ashwell from her mistress, or making any difference between
them. Which Pall telling to Ashwell, and she speaking some words that
her mistress heard, caused great difference among them; all which I am
sorry from my heart to hear of, and I fear will breed ill blood not to be
laid again. So that I fear my wife and I may have some falling out about
it, or at least my father and I, but I shall endeavour to salve up all as
well as I can, or send for her out of the country before the time intended,
which I would be loth to do. In the evening by water to my coz. Roger
Pepys' chamber, where he was not come, but I found Dr. John newly
come to town, and is well again after his sickness; but, Lord! what a
simple man