afterwards thereby, for it do keep me always in so good a frame of mind
that I hope I shall not ever leave this practice. Thence home, and took
my wife by coach to White Hall, and she set down at my Lord's lodgings, I
to a Committee of Tangier, and thence with her homeward, calling at
several places by the way. Among others at Paul's Churchyard, and while I
was in Kirton's shop, a fellow came to offer kindness or force to my wife
in the coach, but she refusing, he went away, after the coachman had
struck him, and he the coachman. So I being called, went thither, and the
fellow coming out again of a shop, I did give him a good cuff or two on
the chops, and seeing him not oppose me, I did give him another; at last
found him drunk, of which I was glad, and so left him, and home, and so to
my office awhile, and so home to supper and to bed. This evening, at my
Lord's lodgings, Mrs. Sarah talking with my wife and I how the Queen do,
and how the King tends her being so ill. She tells us that the Queen's
sickness is the spotted fever; that she was as full of the spots as a
leopard which is very strange that it should be no more known; but perhaps
it is not so. And that the King do seem to take it much to heart, for
that he hath wept before her; but, for all that; that he hath not missed
one night since she was sick, of supping with my Lady Castlemaine; which I
believe is true, for she [Sarah] says that her husband hath dressed the
suppers every night; and I confess I saw him myself coming through the
street dressing of a great supper to-night, which Sarah says is also for
the King and her; which is a very strange thing.

21st. Up, and by and by comes my brother Tom to me, though late (which do
vex me to the blood that I could never get him to come time enough to me,
though I have spoke a hundred times; but he is very sluggish, and too
negligent ever to do well at his trade I doubt), and having lately
considered with my wife very much of the inconvenience of my going in no
better plight, we did resolve of putting me into a better garb, and, among