10th. I had a great deal of pain all night, and a great loosing upon me
so that I could not sleep. In the morning I rose with much pain and to
the office. I went and dined at home, and after dinner with great pain in
my back I went by water to Whitehall to the Privy Seal, and that done with
Mr. Moore and Creed to Hide Park by coach, and saw a fine foot-race three
times round the Park between an Irishman and Crow, that was once my Lord
Claypoole's footman. (By the way I cannot forget that my Lord Claypoole
did the other day make enquiry of Mrs. Hunt, concerning my House in
Axe-yard, and did set her on work to get it of me for him, which methinks
is a very great change.) Crow beat the other by above two miles.
Returned from Hide Park, I went to my Lord's, and took Will (who waited
for me there) by coach and went home, taking my lute home with me. It had
been all this while since I came from sea at my Lord's for him to play on.
To bed in some pain still. For this month or two it is not imaginable how
busy my head has been, so that I have neglected to write letters to my
uncle Robert in answer to many of his, and to other friends, nor indeed
have I done anything as to my own family, and especially this month my
waiting at the Privy Seal makes me much more unable to think of anything,
because of my constant attendance there after I have done at the Navy
Office. But blessed be God for my good chance of the Privy Seal, where I
get every day I believe about L3. This place I got by chance, and my Lord
did give it me by chance, neither he nor I thinking it to be of the worth
that he and I find it to be. Never since I was a man in the world was I
ever so great a stranger to public affairs as now I am, having not read a
new book or anything like it, or enquiring after any news, or what the
Parliament do, or in any wise how things go. Many people look after my
house in Axe-yard to hire it, so that I am troubled with them, and I have
a mind to get the money to buy goods for my house at the Navy Office, and
yet I am loth to put it off because that Mr. Man bids me L1000 for my