a coach, and went to Turlington, the great spectacle-maker, for advice,
who dissuades me from using old spectacles, but rather young ones, and do
tell me that nothing can wrong my eyes more than for me to use
reading-glasses, which do magnify much. Thence home, and there dined, and
then abroad and left my wife and Willett at her tailor's, and I to White
Hall, where the Commissioners of the Treasury do not sit, and therefore I
to Westminster to the Hall, and there meeting with Col. Reames I did very
cheaply by him get copies of the Prince's and Duke of Albemarle's
Narratives, which they did deliver the other day to the House, of which I
am mighty glad, both for my present information and for my future
satisfaction. So back by coach, and took up my wife, and away home, and
there in my chamber all the evening among my papers and my accounts of
Tangier to my great satisfaction, and so to supper and to bed.

5th. Up, and all the morning at the office. At noon home to dinner, and
thence out with my wife and girle, and left them at her tailor's, and I to
the Treasury, and there did a little business for Tangier, and so took
them up again, and home, and when I had done at the office, being post
night, I to my chamber, and there did something more, and so to supper and
to bed.

6th. Up, and to Westminster, where to the Parliament door, and there
spoke with Sir G. Downing, to see what was done yesterday at the Treasury
for Tangier, and it proved as good as nothing, so that I do see we shall
be brought to great straits for money there. He tells me here that he is
passing a Bill to make the Excise and every other part of the King's
Revenue assignable on the Exchequer, which indeed will be a very good
thing. This he says with great glee as an act of his, and how poor a
thing this was in the beginning, and with what envy he carried it on, and
how my Lord Chancellor could never endure him for it since he first begun