Diary, Mar/Apr 1662/63 | Page 8

contrary to our desire, which made me mad
almost; and so Sir J. Minnes, Sir W. Pen, and I dined together at Trinity
House, and thither sent for him to us and told him our minds, which he
seemed not to value much, but went away. I wrote and sent an express
to Walthamstow to Sir W. Pen, who is gone thither this morning, to tell

him of it. However, in the afternoon Wood sends us word that he has
appointed another to go, who shall overtake the ship in the Downes. So
I was late at the office, among other things writing to the Downes, to
the Commander-in-Chief, and putting things into the surest course I
could to help the business. So home and to bed.

12th. Up betimes and to my office all the morning with Captain Cocke
ending their account of their Riga contract for hemp. So home to dinner,
my head full of business against the office. After dinner comes my
uncle Thomas with a letter to my father, wherein, as we desire, he and
his son do order their tenants to pay their rents to us, which pleases me
well. In discourse he tells me my uncle Wight thinks much that I do
never see them, and they have reason, but I do apprehend that they have
been too far concerned with my uncle Thomas against us, so that I have
had no mind hitherto, but now I shall go see them. He being gone, I to
the office, where at the choice of maisters and chyrurgeons for the fleet
now going out, I did my business as I could wish, both for the persons I
had a mind to serve, and in getting the warrants signed drawn by my
clerks, which I was afeard of. Sat late, and having done I went home,
where I found Mary Ashwell come to live with us, of whom I hope
well, and pray God she may please us, which, though it cost me
something, yet will give me much content. So to supper and to bed, and
find by her discourse and carriage to-night that she is not proud, but
will do what she is bid, but for want of being abroad knows not how to
give the respect to her mistress, as she will do when she is told it, she
having been used only to little children, and there was a kind of a
mistress over them. Troubled all night with my cold, I being quite
hoarse with it that I could not speak to be heard at all almost.

13th. Up pretty early and to my office all the morning busy. At noon
home to dinner expecting Ashwell's father, who was here in the
morning and promised to come but he did not, but there came in
Captain Grove, and I found him to be a very stout man, at least in his
discourse he would be thought so, and I do think that he is, and one that
bears me great respect and deserves to be encouraged for his care in all
business. Abroad by water with my wife and Ashwell, and left them at
Mr. Pierce's, and I to Whitehall and St. James's Park (there being no

Commission for Tangier sitting to-day as I looked for) where I walked
an hour or two with great pleasure, it being a most pleasant day. So to
Mrs. Hunt's, and there found my wife, and so took them up by coach,
and carried them to Hide Park, where store of coaches and good faces.
Here till night, and so home and to my office to write by the post, and
so to supper and to bed.

14th. Up betimes and to my office, where we sat all the morning, and a
great rant I did give to Mr. Davis, of Deptford, and others about their
usage of Michell, in his Bewpers,--[Bewpers is the old name for
bunting.]--which he serves in for flaggs, which did trouble me, but yet
it was in defence of what was truth. So home to dinner, where Creed
dined with me, and walked a good while in the garden with me after
dinner, talking, among other things, of the poor service which Sir J.
Lawson did really do in the Streights, for which all this great fame and
honour done him is risen. So to my office, where all the afternoon
giving maisters their warrants for this voyage, for which I hope
hereafter to get something at their coming home. In the evening my
wife and I and Ashwell walked in the garden, and I find she is a pretty
ingenuous
[For ingenious. The distinction of the two words ingenious and
ingenuous by which the former indicates mental, and the