extracts from Charles's speech to the Commons, on the 1st of March;
will be amusing: "I will conclude with putting you in mind of the
season of the year, and the convenience of your being in the
country, in many respects, for the good and welfare of it; for you
will find much tares have been sowed there in your absence. The
arrival of my wife, who I expect some time this month, and the
necessity of my own being out of town to meet her, and to stay some
time before she comes hither, makes it very necessary that the
Parliament be adjourned before Easter, to meet again in the winter .
. . . . The mention of my wife's arrival puts me in mind to
desire you to put that compliment upon her, that her entrance into
the town may be with more decency than the ways will now suffer it
to be; and, to that purpose, I pray you would quickly pass such laws
as are before you, in order to the amending those ways, and that she
may not find Whitehall surrounded with water." Such a bill passed
the Commons on the 24th June. From Charles's Speech, March 1st,
1662.--B.]

But he, I hear since, was forced to stay till almost nine o'clock at night
before he could have done, and then he prorogued them; and so to Gilford,
and lay there. Home, and Mr. Hunt dined with me, and were merry. After
dinner Sir W. Pen and his daughter, and I and my wife by coach to the
Theatre, and there in a box saw "The Little Thief" well done. Thence to
Moorefields, and walked and eat some cheesecake and gammon of bacon, but
when I was come home I was sick, forced to vomit it up again. So my wife
walking and singing upon the leads till very late, it being pleasant and
moonshine, and so to bed.

10th. Sir W. Pen and I did a little business at the office, and so home
again. Then comes Dean Fuller after we had dined, but I got something for