against the Chancellor to be treasonable reflections against his Majesty So that the King is very high, as they say, and God knows what will follow upon it.

18th To church, and with the grave-maker chose a place for my brother to lie in, just under my mother’s pew But to see how a man’s tombes²⁵ are at the mercy of such a fellow, that for sixpence he would, (as his own words were,) ‘I will justle them together but I will make room for him, speaking of the fulness of the middle isle, where he was to lie I dressed myself, and so did my servant Besse, and so to my brother’s again whither, though invited, as the custom is, at one or two o’clock, they come not till four or five But at last one after another they come, many more than I bid and my reckoning that I bid was one hundred and twenty, but I believe there was nearer one hundred and fifty Their service was six biscuits a-piece, and what they pleased of burnt claret My cosen Joyce Norton kept the wine and cakes above, and did give out to them that served, who had white gloves given them But above all, I am beholden to Mrs Holding, who was most kind, and did take mighty pains not only in getting the house and every thing else ready but this day in going up and down to see the house filled and served, in order to mine and their great content, I think, the men sitting by themselves in some rooms, and the women by themselves in others, very close, but yet room enough Anon to church, walking out into the street to the Conduit, and so across the street, and had a very good company along with the corps And being come to the grave as above, Dr Pierson, the minister of the parish, did read the service for buriall and so I saw my poor brother laid into the grave.

21st This day the Houses of Parliament met, and the King met them, with the Queene with him And he made a speech to them among other things, discoursing largely of the plots abroad against him and the peace of the kingdom, and that the dissatisfied party had great hopes upon the effect of the Act for a Triennial Parliament granted by his father, which he desired them to peruse, and, I think, repeal So the Houses did retire to their own House, and did order the Act to be read tomorrow before them, and I suppose it will be repealed, though I believe much against the will of a good many that sit there.

23rd To the Trinity House, and there dined very well and good discourse among the old men Among other things, they observed, that there are but two seamen in the Parliament, viz Sir W Batten and Sir W Pen, and not above twenty or thirty merchants, which is a strange thing in an island.

25th To White Hall, and there to chapel, where it was most infinite full to hear Dr Critton²⁶ The Doctor preached upon the thirty-first of Jeremy, and the twenty-first and twenty-second verses, about a woman compassing a man, meaning the Virgin conceiving and bearing our Saviour It was the worst sermon I ever heard him make, I must confess, and yet it was good, and in two places very bitter, advising the King to do as the Emperor Severus did, to hang up a Presbyter John (a short coat and a long gowne interchangeably) in all the Courts of England But the story of Severus was pretty, that he hanged up forty senators before the Senate-house, and then made a speech presently to the Senate in praise of his own lenity, and then decreed that never any senator after that time should suffer in the same manner without consent of the Senate which he compared to the proceeding of the Long Parliament against my Lord Strafford He said the greatest part of the lay magistrates in England were Puritans, and would not do justice, and the Bishops’ powers were so taken away and lessened, that they could not exercise the power they ought He told the King and the ladies, plainly speaking of death and of the skulls and bones of dead men and women, how there is no difference, that nobody could tell that of the great Marius or Alexander from a pyoneer, nor, for all the pains the ladies take with their faces, he that should look in a charnel-house could not distinguish which was Cleopatra’s, or fair Rosamond’s, or Jane Shore’s.

26th Sir W Batten told me how Sir Richard Temple hath spoke very discontentful words in the house about the Triennial Bill, but it hath been read the second time to-day, and committed, and, he believes, will go on without more ado, though there are many in the house are displeased at it, though they dare not say much But above all expectation Mr Prin is the man against it comparing it to the doll whose head was of gold, and his body and legs and feet of different metal So this Bill had several degrees of calling of Parliaments, in case the King, and then the Council, and then the Lord Chancellor, and then the Sheriffes, should fail to do it He tells me also, how, upon occasion of some ‘prentices being put in