that I did know it. But he told me it was chiefly to make Mr. Pett's
being joyned with Sir W. Batten to go down the better, and do tell me how
he well sees that neither one nor the other can do their duties without
help. But however will let it fall at present without doing more in it to
see whether they will do their duties themselves, which he will see, and
saith they do not. We discoursed of many other things to my great content
and so parted, and I to my wife at my Lord's lodgings, where I heard
Ashwell play first upon the harpsicon, and I find she do play pretty well,
which pleaseth me very well. Thence home by coach, buying at the Temple
the printed virginal-book for her, and so home and to my office a while,
and so home and to supper and to bed.

17th. Up betimes and to my office a while, and then home and to Sir W.
Batten, with whom by coach to St. Margaret's Hill in Southwark, where the
judge of the Admiralty came, and the rest of the Doctors of the Civill
law, and some other Commissioners, whose Commission of Oyer and Terminer
was read, and then the charge, given by Dr. Exton, which methought was
somewhat dull, though he would seem to intend it to be very rhetoricall,
saying that justice had two wings, one of which spread itself over the
land, and the other over the water, which was this Admiralty Court. That
being done, and the jury called, they broke up, and to dinner to a tavern
hard by, where a great dinner, and I with them; but I perceive that this
Court is yet but in its infancy (as to its rising again), and their design
and consultation was, I could overhear them, how to proceed with the most
solemnity, and spend time, there being only two businesses to do, which of
themselves could not spend much time. In the afternoon to the court
again, where, first, Abraham, the boatswain of the King's pleasure boat,
was tried for drowning a man; and next, Turpin, accused by our wicked
rogue Field, for stealing the King's timber; but after full examination,
they were both acquitted, and as I was glad of the first, for the saving