proceeded on till midnight, and then being weary and late to bed.

5th. Up, and I to Captain Cocke's, where he and I did discourse of our
business that we are to go about to the Commissioners of Accounts about
our prizes, and having resolved to conceal nothing but to confess the
truth, the truth being likely to do us most good, we parted, and I to
White Hall, where missing of the Commissioners of the Treasury, I to the
Commissioners of Accounts, where I was forced to stay two hours before I
was called in, and when come in did take an oath to declare the truth to
what they should ask me, which is a great power; I doubt more than the Act
do, or as some say can, give them, to force a man to swear against
himself; and so they fell to enquire about the business of prize-goods,
wherein I did answer them as well as I could, answer them in everything
the just truth, keeping myself to that. I do perceive at last, that, that
they did lay most like a fault to me was, that I did buy goods upon my
Lord Sandwich's declaring that it was with the King's allowance, and my
believing it, without seeing the King's allowance, which is a thing I will
own, and doubt not to justify myself in. That that vexed me most was,
their having some watermen by, to witness my saying that they were rogues
that they had betrayed my goods, which was upon some discontent with one
of the watermen that I employed at Greenwich, who I did think did discover
the goods sent from Rochester to the Custom-House officer; but this can do
me no great harm. They were inquisitive into the minutest particulars,
and the evening great information; but I think that they can do me no
hurt, at the worst, more than to make me refund, if it must be known, what
profit I did make of my agreement with Captain Cocke; and yet, though this
be all, I do find so poor a spirit within me, that it makes me almost out
of my wits, and puts me to so much pain, that I cannot think of anything,
nor do anything but vex and fret, and imagine myself undone, so that I am
ashamed of myself to myself, and do fear what would become of me if any