7th I saw several poor creatures carried by, by constables, for being at a conventicle They go like lambs, without any resistance I would to God they would either conform, or be more wise, and not be catched!

9th This day come the news that the Emperour hath beat the Turke killed the Grand Vizier and several great Bassas with an army of 80,000 men killed and routed, with some considerable loss of his own side, having lost three generals, and the French forces all cut off almost Which is thought as good a service to the Emperour as beating the Turke almost.

10th Abroad to find out one to engrave my tables upon my new sliding rule with silver plates, it being so small that Browne that made it cannot get one to do it So I got Cocker,⁴⁴ the famous writing-master to do it, and I set an hour by him to see him design it all and strange it is to see him with his natural eyes to cut so small at his first designing it, and read it all over, without any missing, when for my life I could not, with my best skill, read one word, or letter of it, but it is use He says that the best light for his life to do a very small thing by, (contrary to Chaucer’s words to the Sun, ‘that he should lend his light to them that small seals grave,’) it should be by an artificial light of a candle, set to advantage, as he could do it I find the fellow by his discourse, very ingenious and among other things, a great admirer and well read in the English poets, and undertakes to judge of them all, and that not impertinently.

11th Comes Cocker with my rule, which he hath engraved to admiration, for goodness and smallness of work it cost me 14s the doing This day, for a wager before the King, my Lords of Castlehaven and Arran, (a son of my Lord of Ormond’s) they two alone did run down and kill a stoute bucke in St James’s parke.

13th To the new play, at the Duke’s house, of Henry the Fifth a most noble play, writ by my Lord Orrery, wherein Betterton, Harris, and Ianthe’s parts most incomparably wrote and done, and the whole play the most full of height and raptures of wit and sense, that ever I heard, having but one incongruity, that King Harry promises to plead for Tudor to their Mistress, Princesse Katherine of France, more than when it comes to it he seems to do, and Tudor refused by her with some kind of indignity, not with a difficulty and honour that it ought to have been done in to him.

15th With Sir J Minnes, he talking of his cures abroad, while he was with the King as a doctor And among others, Sir J Denham he told me he had cured to a miracle At Charing Cross, and there saw the great Dutchman that is come over, under whose arm I went with my hat on, and could not reach higher than his eyebrowes with the tip of my fingers He is a comely and well-made man, and his wife a very little but pretty comely Dutch woman.

16th Wakened about two o’clock this morning with a noise of thunder, which lasted for an hour, with such continued lightnings, not flashes, but flames, that all the sky and ayre was light, and that for a great while, not a minute’s space between new flames all the time such a thing as I never did see, nor could have believed had even been in nature And being put into a great sweat with it, could not sleep till all was over And that accompanied with such a storm of rain as I never heard in my life I expected to find my house in the morning overflowed, but I find not one drop of rain in my house, nor any news of hurt done Mr Pierce tells me the King do still sup every night with my Lady Castlemaine.

19th The news of the Emperour’s victory over the Turkes is by some doubted, but by most confessed to be very small (though great,) of what was talked, which was 80,000 men to be killed and taken of the Turke’s side.

20th I walked to Cheapside to see the effect of a fire there this morning, since four o’clock which I find in the house of Mr Bois, that married Doctor Fuller’s niece, who are both out of town, leaving only a maid and man in town It begun in their house, and hath burned much and many houses backward though none forward, and that in the great uniform pile of buildings in the middle of Cheapside I am very sorry for them, for the Doctor’s sake. Thence to the ’Change, and so home to dinner. And thence to Sir W. Batten’s, whither Sir Richard Ford come, the Sheriffe, who hath been at this fire all the while; and he tells me, upon my question, that he and the Mayor⁴⁵ were there, as it is their dutys to be, not only to keep