the play is only to be read, and therefore home, with no pleasure at all,
but only in sitting next to Betty Hall, that did belong to this house, and
was Sir Philip Howard's mistress; a mighty pretty wench, though my wife
will not think so; and I dare neither commend, nor be seen to look upon
her, or any other now, for fear of offending her. So, our own coach
coming for us, home, and to end letters, and so home, my wife to read to
me out of "The Siege of Rhodes," and so to supper, and to bed.

20th (Lord's day). Up, and with my wife to church, and then home, and
there found W. Joyce come to dine with me, as troublesome a talking
coxcombe as ever he was, and yet once in a year I like him well enough. In
the afternoon my wife and W. Hewer and I to White Hall, where they set me
down and staid till I had been with the Duke of York, with the rest of us
of the Office, and did a little business, and then the Duke of York in
good humour did fall to tell us many fine stories of the wars in Flanders,
and how the Spaniards are the [best] disciplined foot in the world; will
refuse no extraordinary service if commanded, but scorn to be paid for it,
as in other countries, though at the same time they will beg in the
streets: not a soldier will carry you a cloak-bag for money for the world,
though he will beg a penny, and will do the thing, if commanded by his
Commander. That, in the citadel of Antwerp, a soldier hath not a liberty
of begging till he hath served three years. They will cry out against
their King and Commanders and Generals, none like them in the world, and
yet will not hear a stranger say a word of them but he will cut his
throat. That, upon a time, some of the Commanders of their army
exclaiming against their Generals, and particularly the Marquis de
Caranen, the Confessor of the Marquis coming by and hearing them, he stops
and gravely tells them that the three great trades of the world are, the
lawyers, who govern the world; the churchmen, who enjoy the world; and a
sort of fools whom they call souldiers, who make it their work to defend