hands, before he could think fit to deliver it, till he had learnt whether
the Queen would receive it, it being directed to his cozen. He says that
many ladies in Spain, after they are found to be with child, do never stir
out of their beds or chambers till they are brought to bed: so ceremonious
they are in that point also. He tells me of their wooing by serenades at
the window, and that their friends do always make the match; but yet that
they have opportunities to meet at masse at church, and there they make
love: that the Court there hath no dancing, nor visits at night to see the
King or Queen, but is always just like a cloyster, nobody stirring in it:
that my Lord Sandwich wears a beard now, turned up in the Spanish manner.
But that which pleases me most indeed is, that the peace which he hath
made with Spain is now printed here, and is acknowledged by all the
merchants to be the best peace that ever England had with them: and it
appears that the King thinks it so, for this is printed before the
ratification is gone over; whereas that with France and Holland was not in
a good while after, till copys come over of it in English out of Holland
and France, that it was a reproach not to have it printed here. This I am
mighty glad of; and is the first and only piece of good news, or thing fit
to be owned, that this nation hath done several years. After dinner I to
the office, and they gone, anon comes Pelling, and he and I to Gray's Inne
Fields, thinking to have heard Mrs. Knight sing at her lodgings, by a
friend's means of his;

[Mrs. Knight, a celebrated singer and mistress of Charles II. There
is in Waller's "Poems" a song sung by her to the queen on her
birthday. In her portrait, engraved by Faber, after Kneller, she is
represented in mourning, and in a devout posture before a crucifix.
Evelyn refers to her singing as incomparable, and adds that she had
"the greatest reach of any English woman; she had been lately
roaming in Italy, and was much improv'd in that quality" ("Diary,"