After dinner my wife and I, by Mr Rawlinson’s conduct, to the Jewish Synagogue where the men and boys in their vayles, and the women behind a lettice out of sight, and some things stand up, which I believe is their law, in a press to which all coming in do bow, and at the putting on their vayles do say something, to which others that hear the Priest do cry Amen, and the party do kiss his vayle Their service all in a singing way, and in Hebrew And anon their Laws that they take out of the press are carried by several men, four or five several burthens in all, and they do relieve one another, and whether it is that every one desires to have the carrying of it, thus they carried it round about the room while such a service is singing And in the end they had a prayer for the King, in which they pronounced his name in Portugall, but the prayer, like the rest, in Hebrew But, Lord to see the disorder, laughing, sporting, and no attention, but confusion in all their service, more like brutes than people knowing the true God, would make a man forswear ever seeing them more and indeed I never did see so much, or could have imagined there had been any religion in the whole world so absurdly performed as this.

17th Some discourse of the Queene’s being very sick if not dead, the Duke and Duchesse of York being sent for betimes this morning to come to White Hall to her.

18th The parson, Mr Mills, I perceive, did not know whether to pray for the Queene or no, and so said nothing about her, which makes me fear she is dead But enquiring of Sir J Minnes, he told me that he heard she was better last night.

19th Waked with a very high wind, and said to my wife, ‘I pray God I hear not of the death of any great person, this wind is so high’ fearing that the Queene might be dead So up, and going by coach with Sir W Batten and Sir J Minnes to St James’s, they tell me that Sir W Compton, who it is true had been a little sickly for a week or fortnight, but was very well upon Friday at night last at the Tangier Committee with us, was dead, -- died yesterday at which I was most exceedingly surprised, he being, and so all the world saying that he was, one of the worthyest men and best officers of State now in England, and so in my conscience he was of the best temper, valour, ability of mind,integrity, worth, fine person, and diligence of any one man he hath left behind him in the three kingdoms, and yet not forty years old, or if so, that is all I find the sober men of the Court troubled for him, and yet not so as to hinder or lessen their mirth, talking, laughing, and eating, drinking, and doing every thing else, just as if there was no such thing.

Coming to St James’s, I hear that the Queene did sleep five hours pretty well to-night, and that she waked and gargled her mouth, and to sleep again, but that her pulse beats fast, beating twenty to the King’s or my Lady Suffolk’s eleven, but not so strong as it was It seems she was so ill as to be shaved and pidgeons put to her feet, and to have the extreme unction given her by the priests, who were so long about it that the doctors were angry The King they all say is most fondly disconsolate for her, and weeps by her, which makes her weep, which one this day told me he reckons a good sign, for that it carries away some rheume from the head To the Coffee-house in Cornhill, where much talk about the Turke’s proceedings, and that the plague is got to Amsterdam, brought by a ship from Argier, and it is also carried to Hambrough The Duke says the King purposes to forbid any of their ships coming into the river The Duke also told us of several Christian commanders (French) gone over to the Turkes to serve them, and upon enquiry I find that the King of France do by this aspire to the Empire, and so to get the Crowne of Spayne also upon the death of the King, which is very probable, it seems.

20th This evening at my Lord’s lodgings, Mrs Sarah talking with my wife and I how the Queene do, and how the King tends her being so all She tells that the Queene’s sickness is the spotted fever, that she was as full of the sports as a leopard which is very strange that it should be no more known, but perhaps it is not so And that the King do seem to take it much to heart, for that he hath wept before her, but, for all that, that he hath not missed one night since she was sick, of supping with my Lady Castlemaine, which I believe is true for she says that her husband hath dressed the suppers every night, and I confess I saw him myself coming through the street dressing up a great supper to-night, which Sarah says is also for the King and her, which is a very strange thing.