23rd. Up betimes, and so, being trimmed, I to get papers ready against
Sir H. Cholmly come to me by appointment, he being newly come over from
Tangier. He did by and by come, and we settled all matters about his
money, and he is a most satisfied man in me, and do declare his resolution
to give me 200 per annum. It continuing to be a great frost, which gives
us hope for a perfect cure of the plague, he and I to walk in the parke,
and there discoursed with grief of the calamity of the times; how the
King's service is performed, and how Tangier is governed by a man, who,
though honourable, yet do mind his ways of getting and little else
compared, which will never make the place flourish. I brought him and had
a good dinner for him, and there come by chance Captain Cuttance, who
tells me how W. Howe is laid by the heels, and confined to the Royall
Katharine, and his things all seized and how, also, for a quarrel, which
indeed the other night my Lord told me, Captain Ferrers, having cut all
over the back of another of my Lord's servants, is parted from my Lord. I
sent for little Mrs. Frances Tooker, and after they were gone I sat
dallying with her an hour, doing what I would with my hands about her. And
a very pretty creature it is. So in the evening to the office, where late
writing letters, and at my lodging later writing for the last twelve days
my Journall and so to bed. Great expectation what mischief more the
French will do us, for we must fall out. We in extraordinary lacke of
money and everything else to go to sea next year. My Lord Sandwich is
gone from the fleete yesterday toward Oxford.

24th. Up, and after doing some business at the office, I to London, and
there, in my way, at my old oyster shop in Gracious Streete, bought two
barrels of my fine woman of the shop, who is alive after all the plague,
which now is the first observation or inquiry we make at London concerning
everybody we knew before it. So to the 'Change, where very busy with
several people, and mightily glad to see the 'Change so full, and hopes of