content. In the evening sent for home, and there I find my Lady Pen and
Mrs. Lowther, and Mrs. Turner and my wife eating some victuals, and there
I sat and laughed with them a little, and so to the office again, and in
the evening walked with my wife in the garden, and did give Sir W. Pen at
his lodgings (being just come from Deptford from attending the dispatch of
the fire-ships there) an account of what passed the other day at Council
touching Commissioner Pett, and so home to supper and to bed.

22nd. Up, and to my office, where busy, and there comes Mrs. Daniel. . .
At the office I all the morning busy. At noon home to dinner, where
Mr. Lewes Phillips, by invitation of my wife, comes, he coming up to town
with her in the coach this week, and she expected another gentleman, a
fellow-traveller, and I perceive the feast was for him, though she do not
say it, but by some mistake he come not, so there was a good dinner lost.
Here we had the two Mercers, and pretty merry. Much talk with Mr.
Phillips about country business, among others that there is no way for me
to purchase any severall lands in Brampton, or making any severall that is
not so, without much trouble and cost, and, it may be, not do it neither,
so that there is no more ground to be laid to our Brampton house. After
dinner I left them, and to the office, and thence to Sir W. Pen's, there
to talk with Mrs. Lowther, and by and by we hearing Mercer and my boy
singing at my house, making exceeding good musique, to the joy of my
heart, that I should be the master of it, I took her to my office and
there merry a while, and then I left them, and at the office busy all the
afternoon, and sleepy after a great dinner. In the evening come Captain
Hart and Haywood to me about the six merchant-ships now taken up for
men-of-war; and in talk they told me about the taking of "The Royal
Charles;" that nothing but carelessness lost the ship, for they might have
saved her the very tide that the Dutch come up, if they would have but
used means and had had but boats: and that the want of boats plainly lost