for the Navy. He tells me the Lords have passed the Bill for the accounts
with some little amendments. So down to the Hall, and thence with our
company to Exeter House, and then did the business I have said before, we
doing nothing the first time of going, it being too early. At home find
Lovett, to whom I did give my Lady Castlemayne's head to do. He is talking
of going into Spayne to get money by his art, but I doubt he will do no
good, he being a man of an unsettled head. Thence by water down to
Deptford, the first time I have been by water a great while, and there did
some little business and walked home, and there come into my company three
drunken seamen, but one especially, who told me such stories, calling me
Captain, as made me mighty merry, and they would leap and skip, and kiss
what mayds they met all the way. I did at first give them money to drink,
lest they should know who I was, and so become troublesome to me. Parted
at Redriffe, and there home and to the office, where did much business,
and then to Sir W. Batten's, where [Sir] W. Pen, [Sir] R. Ford, and I to
hear a proposition [Sir] R. Ford was to acquaint us with from the Swedes
Embassador, in manner of saying, that for money he might be got to our
side and relinquish the trouble he may give us. Sir W. Pen did make a long
simple declaration of his resolution to give nothing to deceive any poor
man of what was his right by law, but ended in doing whatever any body
else would, and we did commission Sir R. Ford to give promise of not
beyond L350 to him and his Secretary, in case they did not oppose us in
the Phoenix (the net profits of which, as [Sir] R. Ford cast up before us,
the Admiral's tenths, and ship's thirds, and other charges all cleared,
will amount to L3,000) and that we did gain her. [Sir] R. Ford did pray
for a curse upon his family, if he was privy to anything more than he told
us (which I believe he is a knave in), yet we all concluded him the most
fit man for it and very honest, and so left it wholly to him to manage as
he pleased. Thence to the office a little while longer, and so home,
where W. Hewer's mother was, and Mrs. Turner, our neighbour, and supped