the rendering of my closet handsome and the setting up of some neat plates
that Burston has for my money made me, and so home to dinner, and then
with my wife, mother, and Mercer in one boat, and I in another, down to
Woolwich. I walking from Greenwich, the others going to and fro upon the
water till my coming back, having done but little business. So home and
to supper, and, weary, to bed. We have every where taken some prizes.
Our merchants have good luck to come home safe: Colliers from the North,
and some Streights men just now. And our Hambrough ships, of whom we were
so much afeard, are safe in Hambrough. Our fleete resolved to sail out
again from Harwich in a day or two.

30th. Lay long, and very busy all the morning, at noon to the 'Change,
and thence to dinner to Sir G. Carteret's, to talk upon the business of
insuring our goods upon the Hambrough [ships]. Here a very fine, neat
French dinner, without much cost, we being all alone with my Lady and one
of the house with her; thence home and wrote letters, and then in the
evening, by coach, with my wife and mother and Mercer, our usual tour by
coach, and eat at the old house at Islington; but, Lord! to see how my
mother found herself talk upon every object to think of old stories. Here
I met with one that tells me that Jack Cole, my old schoolefellow, is dead
and buried lately of a consumption, who was a great crony of mine. So
back again home, and there to my closet to write letters. Hear to my
great trouble that our Hambrough ships,

[On May 29th Sir William Coventry wrote to Lord Arlington: "Capt.
Langhorne has arrived with seven ships, and reports the taking of
the Hamburg fleet with the man of war their convoy; mistaking the
Dutch fleet for the English, he fell into it" ("Calendar of State
Papers," Domestic, 1664-65, p. 393)]