his lute. To my office all the morning. At noon to the 'Change, and so
home to dinner. After dinner to Gresham College to my Lord Brunker and
Commissioner Pett, taking, Mr. Castle with me there to discourse over his
draught of a ship he is to build for us. Where I first found reason to
apprehend Commissioner Pett to be a man of an ability extraordinary in any
thing, for I found he did turn and wind Castle like a chicken in his
business, and that most pertinently and mister-like, and great pleasure it
was to me to hear them discourse, I, of late having studied something
thereof, and my Lord Brunker is a very able person also himself in this
sort of business, as owning himself to be a master in the business of all
lines and Conicall Sections: Thence home, where very late at my office
doing business to my content, though [God] knows with what ado it was that
when I was out I could get myself to come home to my business, or when I
was there though late would stay there from going abroad again. To supper
and to bed. This evening, by a letter from Plymouth, I hear that two of
our ships, the Leopard and another, in the Straights, are lost by running
aground; and that three more had like to have been so, but got off,
whereof Captain Allen one: and that a Dutch fleete are gone thither; which
if they should meet with our lame ships, God knows what would become of
them. This I reckon most sad newes; God make us sensible of it! This
night, when I come home, I was much troubled to hear my poor canary bird,
that I have kept these three or four years, is dead.

12th. Up, and to White Hall about getting a privy seal for felling of the
King's timber for the navy, and to the Lords' House to speak with my Lord
Privy Seale about it, and so to the 'Change, where to my last night's ill
news I met more. Spoke with a Frenchman who was taken, but released, by a
Dutch man-of-war of thirty-six guns (with seven more of the like or
greater ships), off the North Foreland, by Margett. Which is a strange
attempt, that they should come to our teeth; but the wind being easterly,