cry up the play more than yesterday! and I for that reason like it, I
find, the better, too; by Sir Positive At-all, I understand, is meant Sir
Robert Howard. My Lady [Castlemaine] pretty well pleased with it; but
here I sat close to her fine woman, Willson, who indeed is very handsome,
but, they say, with child by the King. I asked, and she told me this was
the first time her Lady had seen it, I having a mind to say something to
her. One thing of familiarity I observed in my Lady Castlemayne: she
called to one of her women, another that sat by this, for a little patch
off her face, and put it into her mouth and wetted it, and so clapped it
upon her own by the side of her mouth, I suppose she feeling a pimple
rising there. Thence with Creed to Westminster Hall, and there met with
cozen Roger, who tells me of the great conference this day between the
Lords and Commons, about the business of the East India Company, as being
one of the weightiest conferences that hath been, and managed as
weightily. I am heartily sorry I was not there, it being upon a mighty
point of the privileges of the subjects of England, in regard to the
authority of the House of Lords, and their being condemned by them as the
Supreme Court, which, we say, ought not to be, but by appeal from other
Courts. And he tells me that the Commons had much the better of them, in
reason and history there quoted, and believes the Lords will let it fall.
Thence to walk in the Hall, and there hear that Mrs. Martin's child, my
god-daughter, is dead, and so by water to the Old Swan, and thence home,
and there a little at Sir W. Pen's, and so to bed.

6th. Up, and to the office, and thence to White Hall, but come too late
to see the Duke of York, with whom my business was, and so to Westminster
Hall, where met with several people and talked with them, and among other
things understand that my Lord St. John is meant by Mr. Woodcocke, in "The
Impertinents."