fair; and so to supper, W. Hewer with us, and so the girl to comb my head
till I slept, and then to bed.

27th. It being weather like the beginning of a frost and the ground dry,
I walked as far as the Temple, and there took coach and to White Hall, but
the Committee not being met I to Westminster, and there I do hear of the
letter that is in the pamphlet this day of the King of France, declaring
his design to go on against Flanders, and the grounds of it, which do set
us mightily at rest. So to White Hall, and there a committee of Tangier,
but little done there, only I did get two or three little jobs done to the
perfecting two or three papers about my Tangier accounts. Here Mr. Povy
do tell me how he is like to lose his L400 a-year pension of the Duke of
York, which he took in consideration of his place which was taken from
him. He tells me the Duchesse is a devil against him, and do now come
like Queen Elizabeth, and sits with the Duke of York's Council, and sees
what they do; and she crosses out this man's wages and prices, as she sees
fit, for saving money; but yet, he tells me, she reserves L5000 a-year for
her own spending; and my Lady Peterborough, by and by, tells me that the
Duchesse do lay up, mightily, jewells. Thence to my Lady Peterborough's,
she desiring to speak with me. She loves to be taken dressing herself, as
I always find her; and there, after a little talk, to please her, about
her husband's pension, which I do not think he will ever get again, I away
thence home, and all the afternoon mighty busy at the office, and late,
preparing a letter to the Commissioners of Accounts, our first letter to
them, and so home to supper, where Betty Turner was (whose brother Frank
did set out toward the East Indies this day, his father and mother gone
down with him to Gravesend), and there was her little brother Moses, whom
I examined, and he is a pretty good scholar for a child, and so after
supper to talk and laugh, and to bed.