Diary, April 1667 | Page 9

Old Swan,
and drank with Betty and her husband, but no opportunity para baiser la.
So to White Hall to the Council chamber, where I find no Council held
till after the holidays. So to Westminster Hall, and there bought a pair
of snuffers, and saw Mrs. Howlett after her sickness come to the Hall
again. So by coach to the New Exchange and Mercer's and other places
to take up bills for what I owe them, and to Mrs. Pierce, to invite her to
dinner with us on Monday, but staid not with her. In the street met with
Mr. Sanchy, my old acquaintance at Cambridge, reckoned a great
minister here in the City; and by Sir Richard Ford particularly, which I
wonder at; for methinks, in his talk, he is but a mean man. I set him
down in Holborne, and I to the Old Exchange, and there to Sir Robert
Viner's, and made up my accounts there, to my great content; but I find
they do not keep them so regularly as, to be able to do it easily, and
truly, and readily, nor would it have been easily stated by any body on
my behalf but myself, several things being to be recalled to memory,
which nobody else could have done, and therefore it is fully necessary
for me to even accounts with these people as often as I can. So to the
'Change, and there met with Mr. James Houblon, but no hopes, as he
sees, of peace whatever we pretend, but we shall be abused by the King
of France. Then home to the office, and busy late, and then to Sir W.
Batten's, where Mr. Young was talking about the building of the City
again; and he told me that those few churches that are to be new built
are plainly not chosen with regard to the convenience of the City; they
stand a great many in a cluster about Cornhill; but that all of them are
either in the gift of the Lord Archbishop, or Bishop of London, or Lord
Chancellor, or gift of the City. Thus all things, even to the building of
churches, are done in this world! And then he says, which I wonder at,
that I should not in all this time see, that Moorefields have houses two
stories high in them, and paved streets, the City having let leases for
seven years, which he do conclude will be very much to the hindering
the building of the City; but it was considered that the streets cannot be
passable in London till a whole street be built; and several that had got
ground of the City for charity, to build sheds on, had got the trick
presently to sell that for L60, which did not cost them L20 to put up;

and so the City, being very poor in stock, thought it as good to do it
themselves, and therefore let leases for seven years of the ground in
Moorefields; and a good deal of this money, thus advanced, hath been
employed for the enabling them to find some money for Commissioner
Taylor, and Sir W. Batten, towards the charge of "The Loyall London,"
or else, it is feared, it had never been paid. And Taylor having a bill to
pay wherein Alderman Hooker was concerned it was his invention to
find out this way of raising money, or else this had not been thought on.
So home to supper and to bed. This morning come to me the Collectors
for my Pollmoney; for which I paid for my title as Esquire and place of
Clerk of Acts, and my head and wife's, and servants' and their wages,
L40 17s; and though this be a great deal, yet it is a shame I should pay
no more; that is, that I should not be assessed for my pay, as in the
Victualling business and Tangier; and for my money, which, of my
own accord, I had determined to charge myself with L1000 money, till
coming to the Vestry, and seeing nobody of our ablest merchants, as Sir
Andrew Rickard, to do it, I thought it not decent for me to do it, nor
would it be thought wisdom to do it unnecessarily, but vain glory.

6th. Up, and betimes in the morning down to the Tower wharfe, there
to attend the shipping of soldiers, to go down to man some ships going
out, and pretty to see how merrily some, and most go, and how sad
others--the leave they take of their friends, and the terms that some
wives, and other wenches asked to part with them: a pretty mixture. So
to the office, having staid as long as I could, and there sat all the
morning, and