with; but it troubled me to pass by Coome farme where about twenty-one
people have died of the plague, and three or four days since I saw a dead
corps in a coffin lie in the Close unburied, and a watch is constantly
kept there night and day to keep the people in, the plague making us
cruel, as doggs, one to another.

5th. Up, and walked with some Captains and others talking to me to
Greenwich, they crying out upon Captain Teddiman's management of the
business of Bergen, that he staid treating too long while he saw the Dutch
fitting themselves, and that at first he might have taken every ship, and
done what he would with them. How true I cannot tell. Here we sat very
late and for want of money, which lies heavy upon us, did nothing of
business almost. Thence home with my Lord Bruncker to dinner where very
merry with him and his doxy. After dinner comes Colonell Blunt in his new
chariot made with springs; as that was of wicker, wherein a while since we
rode at his house. And he hath rode, he says, now this journey, many
miles in it with one horse, and out-drives any coach, and out-goes any
horse, and so easy, he says. So for curiosity I went into it to try it,
and up the hill to the heath, and over the cart-rutts and found it pretty
well, but not so easy as he pretends, and so back again, and took leave of
my Lord and drove myself in the chariot to the office, and there ended my
letters and home pretty betimes and there found W. Pen, and he staid
supper with us and mighty merry talking of his travells and the French
humours, etc., and so parted and to bed.

6th. Busy all the morning writing letters to several, so to dinner, to
London, to pack up more things thence; and there I looked into the street
and saw fires burning in the street, as it is through the whole City, by
the Lord Mayor's order. Thence by water to the Duke of Albemarle's: all
the way fires on each side of the Thames, and strange to see in broad