would with them. He told us that they [the Parliament] had sent Scott and
Robinson to him [Monk] this afternoon, but he would not hear them. And
that the Mayor and Aldermen had offered him their own houses for himself
and his officers; and that his soldiers would lack for nothing. And
indeed I saw many people give the soldiers drink and money, and all along
in the streets cried, "God bless them!" and extraordinary good words.
Hence we went to a merchant's house hard by, where Lock wrote a note and
left, where I saw Sir Nich. Crisp, and so we went to the Star Tavern (Monk
being then at Benson's), where we dined and I wrote a letter to my Lord
from thence. In Cheapside there was a great many bonfires, and Bow bells
and all the bells in all the churches as we went home were a-ringing.
Hence we went homewards, it being about ten o'clock. But the common joy
that was every where to be seen! The number of bonfires, there being
fourteen between St. Dunstan's and Temple Bar, and at Strand Bridge' I
could at one view tell thirty-one fires. In King-street seven or eight;
and all along burning, and roasting, and drinking for rumps. There being
rumps tied upon sticks and carried up and down. The butchers at the May
Pole in the Strand rang a peal with their knives when they were going to
sacrifice their rump. On Ludgate Hill there was one turning of the spit
that had a rump tied upon it, and another basting of it. Indeed it was
past imagination, both the greatness and the suddenness of it. At one end
of the street you would think there was a whole lane of fire, and so hot
that we were fain to keep still on the further side merely for heat. We
came to the Chequers at Charing Cross, where Chetwind wrote a letter and I
gave him an account of what I had wrote for him to write. Thence home and
sent my letters to the posthouse in London, and my wife and I (after Mr.
Hunt was gone, whom I found waiting at my house) went out again to show
her the fires, and after walking as far as the Exchange we returned and to
bed.