think I had a design to favour my brother Balty, and to that end to
disparage all the rest. But I shall clear all very well, only it do
exercise my thoughts more than I am at leisure for. At home find Balty
and his wife very fine, which I did not like, for fear he do spend too
much of his money that way, and lay [not] up anything. After dinner to
the office again, where by and by Lord Bruncker, [Sir] W. Batten, [Sir] J.
Minnes and I met about receiving Carcasses answers to the depositions
against him. Wherein I did see so much favour from my Lord to him that I
do again begin to see that my Lord is not right at the bottom, and did
make me the more earnest against him, though said little. My Lord rising,
declaring his judgement in his behalf, and going away, I did hinder our
arguing it by ourselves, and so broke up the meeting, and myself went full
of trouble to my office, there to write over the deposition and his
answers side by side, and then home to supper and to bed with some trouble
of mind to think of the issue of this, how it will breed ill blood among
us here.

27th. Up by candle-light, about six o'clock, it being bitter cold weather
again, after all our warm weather, and by water down to Woolwich
rope-yard, I being this day at a leisure, the King and Duke of York being
gone down to Sheerenesse this morning to lay out the design for a
fortification there to the river Medway; and so we do not attend the Duke
of York as we should otherwise have done, and there to the Dock Yard to
enquire of the state of things, and went into Mr. Pett's; and there,
beyond expectation, he did present me with a Japan cane, with a silver
head, and his wife sent me by him a ring, with a Woolwich stone;

[Woolwich stones, still collected in that locality, are simply
waterworn pebbles of flint, which, when broken with a hammer,
exhibit on the smooth surface some resemblance to the human face;