was out of the way, and so returned back presently, and home by water and
to bed.

23rd. Waked this morning between four and five by my blackbird, which
whistles as well as ever I heard any; only it is the beginning of many
tunes very well, but there leaves them, and goes no further. So up and to
my office, where we sat, and among other things I had a fray with Sir J.
Minnes in defence of my Will in a business where the old coxcomb would
have put a foot upon him, which was only in Jack Davis and in him a
downright piece of knavery in procuring a double ticket and getting the
wrong one paid as well as the second was to the true party. But it
appeared clear enough to the board that Will was true in it. Home to
dinner, and after dinner by water to the Temple, and there took my Lyra
Viall book bound up with blank paper for new lessons. Thence to
Greatorex's, and there seeing Sir J. Minnes and Sir W. Pen go by coach I
went in to them and to White Hall; where, in the Matted Gallery, Mr.
Coventry was, who told us how the Parliament have required of Sir G.
Carteret and him an account what money shall be necessary to be settled
upon the Navy for the ordinary charge, which they intend to report
L200,000 per annum. And how to allott this we met this afternoon, and
took their papers for our perusal, and so we parted. Only there was
walking in the gallery some of the Barbary company, and there we saw a
draught of the arms of the company, which the King is of, and so is called
the Royall Company, which is, in a field argent an elephant proper, with a
canton on which England and France is quartered, supported by two Moors.
The crest an anchor winged, I think it is, and the motto too tedious:
"Regio floret, patrocinio commercium, commercioque Regnum." Thence back by
water to Greatorex's, and there he showed me his varnish which he had
invented, which appears every whit as good, upon a stick which he hath
done, as the Indian, though it did not do very well upon my paper ruled