when I think her as good a servant as ever came into a house, but it seems
my wife would have one that would dress a head well, but we were friends
at last. I to church; and this day the parson has got one to read with a
surplice on. I suppose himself will take it up hereafter, for a cunning
fellow he is as any of his coat. Dined with my wife, and then to talk
again above, chiefly about her learning to dance against her going next
year into the country, which I am willing she shall do. Then to church to
a tedious sermon, and thence walked to Tom's to see how things are in his
absence in the country, and so home and in my wife's chamber till bedtime
talking, and then to my office to put things in order to wait on the Duke
to-morrow morning, and so home and to bed.

6th. Sir W. Pen and I early to St. James's by water, where Mr. Coventry,
finding the Duke in bed, and not very well, we did not stay to speak with
him, but to White Hall, and there took boat and down to Woolwich we went.
In our way Mr. Coventry telling us how of late upon enquiry into the
miscarriages of the Duke's family, Mr. Biggs, his steward, is found very
faulty, and is turned out of his employment. Then we fell to reading of a
book which I saw the other day at my Lord Sandwich's, intended for the
late King, finely bound up, a treatise concerning the benefit the
Hollanders make of our fishing, but whereas I expected great matters from
it, I find it a very impertinent [book], and though some things good, yet
so full of tautologies, that we were weary of it. At Woolwich we mustered
the yard, and then to the Hart to dinner, and then to the Rope-yard, where
I did vex Sir W. Pen I know to appear so well acquainted, I thought better
than he, in the business of hemp; thence to Deptford, and there looked
over several businesses, and wakened the officers there; so walked to
Redriffe, and thence, landing Sir W. Pen at the Tower, I to White Hall
with Mr. Coventry, and so to my Lord Sandwich's lodgings, but my Lord was
not within, being at a ball this night with the King at my Lady