at the office, and tells me how the plague is decreased this week 740, for
which God be praised! but that it encreases at our end of the town still,
and says how all the towne is full of Captain Cocke's being in some ill
condition about prize-goods, his goods being taken from him, and I know
not what. But though this troubles me to have it said, and that it is
likely to be a business in Parliament, yet I am not much concerned at it,
because yet I believe this newes is all false, for he would have wrote to
me sure about it. Being come to my wife, at our lodging, I did go to bed,
and left my wife with her people to laugh and dance and I to sleep.

5th. Lay long in bed talking among other things of my sister Pall, and my
wife of herself is very willing that I should give her L400 to her
portion, and would have her married soon as we could; but this great
sicknesse time do make it unfit to send for her up. I abroad to the
office and thence to the Duke of Albemarle, all my way reading a book of
Mr. Evelyn's translating and sending me as a present, about directions for
gathering a Library;

[Instructions concerning erecting of a Library, presented to my
Lord the President De Mesme by Gilbert Naudeus, and now interpreted
by Jo. Evelyn, Esquire. London, 1661: This little book was
dedicated to Lord Clarendon by the translator. It was printed while
Evelyn was abroad, and is full of typographical errors; these are
corrected in a copy mentioned in Evelyn's "Miscellaneous Writings,"
1825, p. xii, where a letter to Dr. Godolphin on the subject is
printed.]

but the book is above my reach, but his epistle to my Lord Chancellor is a
very fine piece. When I come to the Duke it was about the victuallers'
business, to put it into other hands, or more hands, which I do advise in,