for certain that Creed is like to speed in his match with Mrs. Betty
Pickering. Here dined with me also Mr. Hollier, who is mighty vain in his
pretence to talk Latin. So to the Office again all the afternoon till
night, very busy, and so with much content home, and made my wife sing and
play on the flageolet to me till I slept with great pleasure in bed.

14th. Up, and by water to White Hall and St. James's, and to see Sir W.
Coventry, and discourse about business of our Office, telling him my
trouble there, to see how things are ordered. I told him also what Cocke
told me the other day, but he says there is not much in it, though he do
know that this hath been in the eye of some persons to compass for the
turning all things in the navy, and that it looks so like a popular thing
as that he thinks something may be done in it, but whether so general or
no, as I tell it him, he knows not. Thence to White Hall, and there wait
at the Council-chamber door a good while, talking with one or other, and
so home by water, though but for a little while, because I am to return to
White Hall. At home I find Symson, putting up my new chimney-piece, in
our great chamber, which is very fine, but will cost a great deal of
money, but it is not flung away. So back to White Hall, and after the
council up, I with Mr. Wren, by invitation, to Sir Stephen Fox's to
dinner, where the Cofferer and Sir Edward Savage; where many good stories
of the antiquity and estates of many families at this day in Cheshire, and
that part of the kingdom, more than what is on this side, near London. My
Lady [Fox] dining with us; a very good lady, and a family governed so
nobly and neatly as do me good to see it. Thence the Cofferer, Sir
Stephen, and I to the Commissioners of the Treasury about business: and so
I up to the Duke of York, who enquired for what I had promised him, about
my observations of the miscarriages of our Office;

[This refers to the letter on the affairs of the office which Pepys