pasty. Before dinner, my Lady Wright and my Lady Jem. sang songs to the
harpsicon. Very pleasant and merry at dinner. And then I went away by
water to the office, and there staid till it was late. At night before I
went to bed the barber came to trim me and wash me, and so to bed, in
order to my being clean to-morrow.

23rd. This day I went to my Lord, and about many other things at
Whitehall, and there made even my accounts with Mr. Shepley at my Lord's,
and then with him and Mr. Moore and John Bowles to the Rhenish wine house,
and there came Jonas Moore, the mathematician, to us, and there he did by
discourse make us fully believe that England and France were once the same
continent, by very good arguments, and spoke very many things, not so much
to prove the Scripture false as that the time therein is not well computed
nor understood. From thence home by water, and there shifted myself into
my black silk suit (the first day I have put it on this year), and so to
my Lord Mayor's by coach, with a great deal of honourable company, and
great entertainment. At table I had very good discourse with Mr. Ashmole,
wherein he did assure me that frogs and many insects do often fall from
the sky, ready formed. Dr. Bates's singularity in not rising up nor
drinking the King's nor other healths at the table was very much observed.

[Dr. William Bates, one of the most eminent of the Puritan divines,
and who took part in the Savoy Conference. His collected writings
were published in 1700, and fill a large folio volume. The
Dissenters called him silver-tongued Bates. Calamy affirmed that if
Bates would have conformed to the Established Church he might have
been raised to any bishopric in the kingdom. He died in 1699, aged
seventy-four.]

From thence we all took coach, and to our office, and there sat till it