Middleton, and that my Lord Brouncker did mind his mathematics too much.
I did not give much encouragement to that of finding fault with my
fellow-officers; but did stand up for the constitution, and did say that
what faults there were in our Office would be found not to arise from the
constitution, but from the failures of the officers in whose hands it was.
This he did seem to give good ear to; but did give me of myself very good
words, which pleased me well, though I shall not build upon them any
thing. Thence home; and after dinner by water with Tom down to Greenwich,
he reading to me all the way, coming and going, my collections out of the
Duke of York's old manuscript of the Navy, which I have bound up, and do
please me mightily. At Greenwich I come to Captain Cocke's, where the
house full of company, at the burial of James Temple, who, it seems, hath
been dead these five days here I had a very good ring, which I did give my
wife as soon as I come home. I spent my time there walking in the garden,
talking with James Pierce, who tells me that he is certain that the Duke
of Buckingham had been with his wenches all the time that he was absent,
which was all the last week, nobody knowing where he was. The great talk
is of the King's being hot of late against Conventicles, and to see
whether the Duke of Buckingham's being returned will turn the King, which
will make him very popular: and some think it is his plot to make the King
thus, to shew his power in the making him change his mind. But Pierce did
tell me that the King did certainly say, that he that took one stone from
the Church, did take two from his Crown. By and by the corpse come out;
and I, with Sir Richard Browne and Mr. Evelyn, in their coach to the
church, where Mr. Plume preached. But I, in the midst of the sermon, did
go out, and walked all alone, round to Deptford, thinking para have seen
the wife of Bagwell, which I did at her door, but I could not conveniently
go into her house, and so lost my labour: and so to the King's Yard, and
there my boat by order met me; and home, where I made my boy to finish the
my manuscript, and so to supper and to bed my new chamber-maid, that comes