house, but the most uniforme in all that ever I saw; and some things to
excess. Pretty to see over the screene of the hall (put up by Sir J.
Harrington, a Long Parliamentman) the King's head, and my Lord of Essex on
one side, and Fairfax on the other; and upon the other side of the
screene, the parson of the parish, and the lord of the manor and his
sisters. The window-cases, door-cases, and chimnys of all the house are
marble. He showed me a black boy that he had, that died of a consumption,
and being dead, he caused him to be dried in an oven, and lies there
entire in a box. By and by to dinner, where his lady I find yet handsome,
but hath been a very handsome woman; now is old. Hath brought him near
L100,000 and now he lives, no man in England in greater plenty, and
commands both King and Council with his credit he gives them. Here was a
fine lady a merchant's wife at dinner with us, and who should be here in
the quality of a woman but Mrs. Worship's daughter, Dr. Clerke's niece,
and after dinner Sir Robert led us up to his long gallery, very fine,
above stairs (and better, or such, furniture I never did see), and there
Mrs. Worship did give us three or four very good songs, and sings very
neatly, to my great delight. After all this, and ending the chief
business to my content about getting a promise of some money of him, we
took leave, being exceedingly well treated here, and a most pleasant
journey we had back, Povy and I, and his company most excellent in
anything but business, he here giving me an account of as many persons at
Court as I had a mind or thought of enquiring after. He tells me by a
letter he showed me, that the King is not, nor hath been of late, very
well, but quite out of humour; and, as some think, in a consumption, and
weary of every thing. He showed me my Lord Arlington's house that he was
born in, in a towne called Harlington: and so carried me through a most
pleasant country to Brainford, and there put me into my boat, and good
night. So I wrapt myself warm, and by water got to Woolwich about one in
the morning, my wife and all in bed.