office, where about 8 at night comes Sir G. Carteret and Sir W. Batten,
and so we did some business, and then home and to bed, my mind troubled
about Sir W. Pen, his playing the rogue with me to-day, as also about the
charge of money that is in my house, which I had forgot; but I made the
maids to rise and light a candle, and set it in the dining-room, to scare
away thieves, and so to sleep.

4th. Up early, and Mr. Moore comes to me and tells me that Mr. Barnwell
is dead, which troubles me something, and the more for that I believe we
shall lose Mr. Shepley's company. By and by Sir W. Batten and I by water
to Woolwich; and there saw an experiment made of Sir R. Ford's Holland's
yarn (about which we have lately had so much stir; and I have much
concerned myself for our ropemaker, Mr. Hughes, who has represented it as
bad), and we found it to be very bad, and broke sooner than, upon a fair
triall, five threads of that against four of Riga yarn; and also that some
of it had old stuff that had been tarred, covered over with new hemp,
which is such a cheat as hath not been heard of. I was glad of this
discovery, because I would not have the King's workmen discouraged (as Sir
W. Batten do most basely do) from representing the faults of merchants'
goods, where there is any. After eating some fish that we had bought upon
the water at Falconer's, we went to Woolwich, and there viewed our frames
of our houses, and so home, and I to my Lord's, who I find resolved to buy
Brampton Manor of Sir Peter Ball,

[Sir Peter Ball was the Queen's Attorney-General, and Evelyn
mentions, in his Diary (January 11th, 1661-62), having received from
him the draft of an act against the nuisance of the smoke of
London.]

at which I am glad. Thence to White Hall, and showed Sir G. Carteret the