TO MRS. STEWARD

_A wedding in the city_


20 _Sept._ 1695.

MADAM,

You are very good, and pray continue so, by as many kind messages as
you can, and notices of your health, such as the bearer brings you
back my thanks for, and a thousand services. Here's a sad town, and
God knows when it will be a better, our losses at sea making a very
melancholy exchange at both ends of it; the gentlewomen of this, to
say nothing of the other, sitting with their arms across, without a
yard of muslin in their shops to sell, while the ladies, they tell
me, walk pensively by, without a shilling, I mean a good one, in their
pockets to buy. One thing there is indeed, that comes in my way as a
Governor, to hear of, which carries a little mirth with it, and indeed
is very odd. Two wealthy citizens that are lately dead, and left their
estates, one to a Blue Coat boy, and the other to a Blue Coat girl, in
Christ's Hospital. The extraordinariness of which has led some of
the magistrates to carry it on to a match, which is ended in a public
wedding; he in his habit of blue satin, led by two of the girls, and
she in blue, with an apron green and petticoat yellow, all of sarsnet,
led by two of the boys of the house, through Cheapside to Guildhall
Chapel, where they were married by the Dean of St. Paul's, she given
by my Lord Mayor. The wedding dinner, it seems, was kept in the
Hospital Hall, but the great day will be tomorrow, St Matthew's; when,
so much I am sure of, my Lord Mayor will be there, and myself also