where to choose, and do see how my nature would gladly return to laying
out money in this trade. I could not tell whether to lay out my money for
books of pleasure, as plays, which my nature was most earnest in; but at
last, after seeing Chaucer, Dugdale's History of Paul's, Stows London,
Gesner, History of Trent, besides Shakespeare, Jonson, and Beaumont's
plays, I at last chose Dr. Fuller's Worthys, the Cabbala or Collections of
Letters of State, and a little book, Delices de Hollande, with another
little book or two, all of good use or serious pleasure: and Hudibras,
both parts, the book now in greatest fashion for drollery, though I
cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies. My mind being thus
settled, I went by linke home, and so to my office, and to read in
Rushworth; and so home to supper and to bed. Calling at Wotton's, my
shoemaker's, today, he tells me that Sir H. Wright is dying; and that
Harris is come to the Duke's house again; and of a rare play to be acted
this week of Sir William Davenant's: the story of Henry the Eighth with
all his wives.

11th. Up and abroad toward the Wardrobe, and going out Mr. Clerke met me
to tell me that Field has a writ against me in this last business of L30
10s., and that he believes he will get an execution against me this
morning, and though he told me it could not be well before noon, and that
he would stop it at the Sheriff's, yet it is hard to believe with what
fear I did walk and how I did doubt at every man I saw and do start at the
hearing of one man cough behind my neck. I to, the Wardrobe and there
missed Mr. Moore. So to Mr. Holden's and evened all reckonings there for
hats, and then walked to Paul's Churchyard and after a little at my
bookseller's and bought at a shop Cardinall Mazarin's Will in French. I
to the Coffeehouse and there among others had good discourse with an Iron
Merchant, who tells me the great evil of discouraging our natural
manufacture of England in that commodity by suffering the Swede to bring