Diary, May 1667 | Page 7

me what I did not
know, that a child (as this do) will hunt and hunt up and down with its
mouth if you touch the cheek of it with your finger's end for a nipple,
and fit its mouth for sucking, but this hath not sucked yet, she having
no nipples. Here sat a while, and then my wife and I, it being a most
curious clear evening, after some rain to-day, took a most excellent tour
by coach to Bow, and there drank and back again, and so a little at the
office, and home to read a little, and to supper and bed mightily

refreshed with this evening's tour, but troubled that it hath hindered my
doing some business which I would have done at the office. This day
the newes is come that the fleete of the Dutch, of about 20 ships, which
come upon our coasts upon design to have intercepted our colliers, but
by good luck failed, is gone to the Frith, --[Frith of Forth. See 5th of
this month.]-- and there lies, perhaps to trouble the Scotch privateers,
which have galled them of late very much, it may be more than all our
last year's fleete.

4th. Up and to the office, where sat all the morning, among other things
a great conflict I had with Sir W. Warren, he bringing a letter to the
Board, flatly in words charging them with their delays in passing his
accounts, which have been with them these two years, part of which I
said was not true, and the other undecent. The whole Board was
concerned to take notice of it, as well as myself, but none of them had
the honour to do it, but suffered me to do it alone, only Sir W. Batten,
who did what he did out of common spite to him. So I writ in the
margin of the letter, "Returned as untrue," and, by consent of the Board,
did give it him again, and so parted. Home to dinner, and there came a
woman whose husband I sent for, one Fisher, about the business of
Perkins and Carcasse, and I do think by her I shall find the business as
bad as ever it was, and that we shall find Commissioner Pett a rogue,
using foul play on behalf of Carcasse. After dinner to the office again,
and there late all the afternoon, doing much business, and with great
content home to supper and to bed.

5th (Lord's day). Up, and going down to the water side, I met Sir John
Robinson, and so with him by coach to White Hall, still a vain, prating,
boasting man as any I know, as if the whole City and Kingdom had all
its work done by him. He tells me he hath now got a street ordered to
be continued, forty feet broad, from Paul's through Cannon Street to the
Tower, which will be very fine. He and others this day, where I was in
the afternoon, do tell me of at least six or eight fires within these few
days; and continually stirs of fires, and real fires there have been, in one
place or other, almost ever since the late great fire, as if there was a fate
sent people for fire. I walked over the Park to Sir W. Coventry's.
Among other things to tell him what I hear of people being forced to

sell their bills before September for 35 and 40 per cent. loss, and what
is worst, that there are some courtiers that have made a knot to buy
them, in hopes of some ways to get money of the King to pay them,
which Sir W. Coventry is amazed at, and says we are a people made up
for destruction, and will do what he can to prevent all this by getting
the King to provide wherewith to pay them. We talked of Tangier, of
which he is ashamed; also that it should put the King to this charge for
no good in the world: and now a man going over that is a good soldier,
but a debauched man, which the place need not to have. And so used
these words: "That this place was to the King as my Lord Carnarvon
says of wood, that it is an excrescence of the earth provided by God for
the payment of debts." Thence away to Sir G. Carteret, whom I find
taking physic. I staid talking with him but a little, and so home to
church, and heard a dull sermon, and most of the best women of our
parish gone into the country, or at least not at church. So home, and
find my boy not there, nor was at church, which vexed