psalmes of Will Lawes s,¹⁸³ and some songs, and so I went away Notwithstanding this was the first day of the King’s proclamation against hackney coaches coming into the streets to stand to be hired, yet I got one to carry me home.

10th The Comtroller¹⁸⁴ and I to the coffee-house, where he showed me the state of his case, how the King did owe him above £6000 But I do not see great likelihood for them to be paid, since they begin already in Parliament to dispute the paying off the just seadebts, which were already promised to be paid, and will be the undoing of thousands if they be not paid.

15th My Lord did this day show me the King’s picture which was done in Flanders, that the King did promise my Lord before he ever saw him, and that we did expect to have had at sea before the King come to us, but it come but today, and indeed it is the most pleasant and the most like him that ever I saw picture in my life To Sir W Batten s to dinner, he having a couple of servants married today, and so there was a great number of merchants, and others of good quality on purpose after dinner to make an offering, which, when dinner was done, we did, and I did give ten shillings and no more, though I believe most of the rest did give more, and did believe that I did so too.

19th I went with the Treasurer in his coach to White Hall, and in our way, in discourse, do find him a very good-natured man, and, talking of those men who now stand condemned for murdering the King, he says that he believes, that, if the law would give leave, the King is a man of so great compassion that he would wholly acquit them.

20th Mr Shepley and I to the new play-house near Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields (which was formerly Gibbon’s tennis-court), where the play of Beggar’s Bush¹⁸⁵ was newly begun, and so we went in and saw it well acted and here I saw the first time one Moone,¹⁸⁶ who is said to be the best actor in the world, lately come over with the King, and indeed it is the finest play-house, I believe, that ever was in England This morning I found my Lord in bed late, he having been with the King, Queen, and Princesse, at the Cockpit all night, where General Monk treated them, and after supper a play, where the King did put a great affront upon Singleton’s musique, he bidding them stop and made the French musique play, which, my Lord says, do much outdo all ours.

22nd This morning come the carpenters to make me a door at the other side of my house, going into the entry To Mr Fox’s, where we found Mrs Fox¹⁸⁷ within, and an alderman of London paying £1000 or £1400 in gold upon the table for the King Mr Fox come in presently and did receive us with a great deal of respect, and then did take my wife and I to the Queen’s presence-chamber, where he got my wife placed behind the Queen’s chaire, and the two Princesses come to dinner The Queen a very little plain old woman, and nothing more in her presence in any respect nor garbe than any ordinary woman The Princesse of Orange I had often seen before The Princesse Henrietta is very pretty, but much below my expectation, and her dressing of herself with her haire frized short up to her eares, did make her seem so much the less to me But my wife standing near her with two or three black patches on and well dressed, did seem to me much handsomer than she.

To White Hall at about nine at night, and there, with Laud the page that went with me, we could not get out of Henry VIII’s gallery into the further part of the boarded gallery, where my Lord was walking with my Lord Ormond, and we had a key of Sir S Morland’s, but all would not do, till at last, by knocking, Mr Harrison the door-keeper did open us the door, and, after some talk with my Lord about getting a catch to carry my Lord St Albans’s¹⁸⁸ goods to France, I parted and went home on foot.

25th I had a letter brought me from my Lord to get a ship ready to carry the Queen’s things over to France, she being to go within five or six days.

27th To Westminster Hall, and in King Street there being a great stop of coaches, there was a falling out between a drayman and my Lord Chesterfield’s coachman, and one of his footmen killed Mr Moore told me how the House had this day voted the King to have all the Excise for ever This day I do also