three times and I have seen them all, and all in this week; which is too
much, and more than I will do again a good while. Coming out of the house
we met Mrs. Pierce and her comrade Mrs. Clifford, and I seeming willing to
stay with them to talk my wife grew angry, and whether she be jealous or
no I know, not, but she loves not that I should speak of Mrs. Pierce.
Home on foot very discontented, in my way I calling at the Instrument
maker, Hunt's, and there saw my lute, which is now almost done, it being
to have a new neck to it and to be made to double strings. So home and to
bed. This day I did give my man Will a sound lesson about his forbearing
to give us the respect due to a master and mistress.

26th. This morning Sir W. Pen and I should have gone out of town with my
Lady Batten, to have met Sir William coming back from Portsmouth; at
Kingston, but could not, by reason that my Lord of Peterborough (who is to
go Governor of Tangier) came this morning, with Sir G. Carteret, to advise
with us about completing of the affairs and preparacions for that place.
So at the office all the morning, and in the afternoon Sir W. Pen, my wife
and I to the Theatre, and there saw "The Country Captain," the first time
it hath been acted this twenty-five years, a play of my Lord Newcastle's,
but so silly a play as in all my life I never saw, and the first that ever
I was weary of in my life. So home again, and in the evening news was
brought that Sir R. Slingsby, our Comptroller (who hath this day been sick
a week), is dead; which put me into so great a trouble of mind, that all
the night I could not sleep, he being a man that loved me, and had many
qualitys that made me to love him above all the officers and commissioners
in the Navy. Coming home we called at Dan Rawlinson's; and there drank
good sack, and so home.

27th (Lord's day). At church in the morning; where in the pew both Sir
Williams and I had much talk about the death of Sir Robert, which troubles