18th. Up, and after being ready and done several businesses with people,
I took water (taking a dram of the bottle at the waterside) with a gaily,
the first that ever I had yet, and down to Woolwich, calling at Ham
Creeke, where I met Mr. Deane, and had a great deal of talke with him
about business, and so to the Ropeyarde and Docke, discoursing several
things, and so back again and did the like at Deptford, and I find that it
is absolutely necessary for me to do thus once a weeke at least all the
yeare round, which will do me great good, and so home with great ease and
content, especially out of the content which I met with in a book I bought
yesterday, being a discourse of the state of Rome under the present Pope,
Alexander the 7th, it being a very excellent piece. After eating
something at home, then to my office, where till night about business to
dispatch. Among other people came Mr. Primate, the leather seller, in
Fleete Streete, to see me, he says, coming this way; and he tells me that
he is upon a proposal to the King, whereby, by a law already in being, he
will supply the King, without wrong to any man, or charge to the people in
general, so much as it is now, above L200,000 per annum, and God knows
what, and that the King do like the proposal, and hath directed that the
Duke of Monmouth, with their consent, be made privy, and go along with him
and his fellow proposer in the business, God knows what it is; for I
neither can guess nor believe there is any such thing in his head. At
night made an end of the discourse I read this morning, and so home to
supper and to bed.

19th. Up and to the office, where we sat all the morning, and I laboured
hard at Deering's business of his deals more than I would if I did not
think to get something, though I do really believe that I did what is to
the King's advantage in it, and yet, God knows, the expectation of profit
will have its force and make a man the more earnest. Dined at home, and
then with Mr. Bland to another meeting upon his arbitration, and seeing we