which I have got to-day by water, which troubles me. At the office doing
business a good while, and so home and had a posset, and so to bed.

4th. At the office all the morning setting about business, and after
dinner to it again, and so till night, and then home looking over my
Brampton papers against to-morrow that we are to meet with our counsel on
both sides toward an arbitration, upon which I was very late, and so to
bed.

5th. Up, it being a snow and hard frost, and being up I did call up
Sarah, who do go away to-day or to-morrow. I paid her her wages, and gave
her 10s. myself, and my wife 5s. to give her. For my part I think never
servant and mistress parted upon such foolish terms in the world as they
do, only for an opinion in my wife that she is ill-natured, in all other
things being a good servant. The wench cried, and I was ready to cry too,
but to keep peace I am content she should go, and the rather, though I say
nothing of that, that Jane may come into her place. This being done, I
walked towards Guildhall, thither being summoned by the Commissioners for
the Lieutenancy; but they sat not this morning. So meeting in my way W.
Swan, I took him to a house thereabouts, and gave him a morning draft of
buttered ale;

[Buttered ale must have been a horrible concoction, as it is
described as ale boiled with lump sugar and spice.]

he telling me still much of his Fanatique stories, as if he were a great
zealot, when I know him to be a very rogue. But I do it for discourse,
and to see how things stand with him and his party; who I perceive have
great expectation that God will not bless the Court nor Church, as it is
now settled, but they must be purified. The worst news he tells me, is