Diary, March 1667/68 | Page 7

quiet rest a good while.

6th. Up betimes, and with Sir D. Gawden to Sir W, Coventry's chamber:
where the first word he said to me was, "Good-morrow, Mr. Pepys, that
must be Speaker of the Parliament-house:" and did protest I had got

honour for ever in Parliament. He said that his brother, that sat by him,
admires me; and another gentleman said that I could not get less than
L1000 a-year if I would put on a gown and plead at the Chancery-bar;
but, what pleases me most, he tells me that the Sollicitor-Generall did
protest that he thought I spoke the best of any man in England. After
several talks with him alone, touching his own businesses, he carried
me to White Hall, and there parted; and I to the Duke of York's
lodgings, and find him going to the Park, it being a very fine morning,
and I after him; and, as soon as he saw me, he told me, with great
satisfaction, that I had converted a great many yesterday, and did, with
great praise of me, go on with the discourse with me. And, by and by,
overtaking the King, the King and Duke of York come to me both; and
he--[The King]--said, "Mr. Pepys, I am very glad of your success
yesterday;" and fell to talk of my well speaking; and many of the Lords
there. My Lord Barkeley did cry the up for what they had heard of it;
and others, Parliament-men there, about the King, did say that they
never heard such a speech in their lives delivered in that manner.
Progers, of the Bedchamber, swore to me afterwards before Brouncker,
in the afternoon, that he did tell the King that he thought I might teach
the Sollicitor-Generall. Every body that saw me almost come to me, as
Joseph Williamson and others, with such eulogys as cannot be
expressed. From thence I went to Westminster Hall, where I met Mr. G.
Montagu, who come to me and kissed me, and told me that he had
often heretofore kissed my hands, but now he would kiss my lips:
protesting that I was another Cicero, and said, all the world said the
same of me. Mr. Ashburnham, and every creature I met there of the
Parliament, or that knew anything of the Parliament's actings, did salute
me with this honour:--Mr. Godolphin;--Mr. Sands, who swore he
would go twenty mile, at any time, to hear the like again, and that he
never saw so many sit four hours together to hear any man in his life, as
there did to hear me; Mr. Chichly,--Sir John Duncomb,--and everybody
do say that the kingdom will ring of my abilities, and that I have done
myself right for my whole life: and so Captain Cocke, and others of my
friends, say that no man had ever such an opportunity of making his
abilities known; and, that I may cite all at once, Mr. Lieutenant of the
Tower did tell me that Mr. Vaughan did protest to him, and that, in his
hearing it, said so to the Duke of Albemarle, and afterwards to W.

Coventry, that he had sat twenty-six years in Parliament and never
heard such a speech there before: for which the Lord God make me
thankful! and that I may make use of it not to pride and vain-glory, but
that, now I have this esteem, I may do nothing that may lessen it! I
spent the morning thus walking in the Hall, being complimented by
everybody with admiration: and at noon stepped into the Legg with Sir
William Warren, who was in the Hall, and there talked about a little of
his business, and thence into the Hall a little more, and so with him by
coach as far as the Temple almost, and there 'light, to follow my Lord
Brouncker's coach, which I spied, and so to Madam Williams's, where I
overtook him, and agreed upon meeting this afternoon, and so home to
dinner, and after dinner with W. Pen, who come to my house to call me,
to White Hall, to wait on the Duke of York, where he again and all the
company magnified me, and several in the Gallery: among others, my
Lord Gerard, who never knew me before nor spoke to me, desires his
being better acquainted with me; and [said] that, at table where he was,
he never heard so much said of any man as of me, in his whole life. We
waited on the Duke of York, and thence into the Gallery, where the
House of Lords waited the King's coming out of the Park, which he did
by and by; and there, in the Vane-room, my Lord Keeper delivered a
message to the King, the Lords