agreement, dined, and there was Charles Porter, Temple, Fern, Debasty,
whose bad English and pleasant discourses was exceeding good
entertainment, Matt. Wren, Major Cooper, and myself, mighty merry and
pretty discourse. They talked for certain, that now the King do follow
Mrs. Stewart wholly, and my Lady Castlemayne not above once a week; that
the Duke of York do not haunt my Lady Denham so much; that she troubles
him with matters of State, being of my Lord Bristoll's faction, and that
he avoids; that she is ill still. After dinner I away to the office,
where we sat late upon Mr. Gawden's accounts, Sir J. Minnes being gone
home sick. I late at the office, and then home to supper and to bed,
being mightily troubled with a pain in the small of my back, through cold,
or (which I think most true) my straining last night to get open my plate
chest, in such pain all night I could not turn myself in my bed. Newes
this day from Brampton, of Mr. Ensum, my sister's sweetheart, being dead:
a clowne.

13th. Up, and to the office, where we sat. At noon to the 'Change and
there met Captain Cocke, and had a second time his direction to bespeak
L100 of plate, which I did at Sir R. Viner's, being twelve plates more,
and something else I have to choose. Thence home to dinner, and there W.
Hewer dined with me, and showed me a Gazette, in April last, which I
wonder should never be remembered by any body, which tells how several
persons were then tried for their lives, and were found guilty of a design
of killing the King and destroying the Government; and as a means to it,
to burn the City; and that the day intended for the plot was the 3rd of
last September.

[The "Gazette" of April 23rd-26th, 1666, which contains the
following remarkable passage: "At the Sessions in the Old Bailey,
John Rathbone, an old army colonel, William Saunders, Henry Tucker,