things into the surest course I could to help the business. So home and
to bed.

12th. Up betimes and to my office all the morning with Captain Cocke
ending their account of their Riga contract for hemp. So home to dinner,
my head full of business against the office. After dinner comes my uncle
Thomas with a letter to my father, wherein, as we desire, he and his son
do order their tenants to pay their rents to us, which pleases me well. In
discourse he tells me my uncle Wight thinks much that I do never see them,
and they have reason, but I do apprehend that they have been too far
concerned with my uncle Thomas against us, so that I have had no mind
hitherto, but now I shall go see them. He being gone, I to the office,
where at the choice of maisters and chyrurgeons for the fleet now going
out, I did my business as I could wish, both for the persons I had a mind
to serve, and in getting the warrants signed drawn by my clerks, which I
was afeard of. Sat late, and having done I went home, where I found Mary
Ashwell come to live with us, of whom I hope well, and pray God she may
please us, which, though it cost me something, yet will give me much
content. So to supper and to bed, and find by her discourse and carriage
to-night that she is not proud, but will do what she is bid, but for want
of being abroad knows not how to give the respect to her mistress, as she
will do when she is told it, she having been used only to little children,
and there was a kind of a mistress over them. Troubled all night with my
cold, I being quite hoarse with it that I could not speak to be heard at
all almost.

13th. Up pretty early and to my office all the morning busy. At noon
home to dinner expecting Ashwell's father, who was here in the morning and
promised to come but he did not, but there came in Captain Grove, and I
found him to be a very stout man, at least in his discourse he would be