Up and to the office, where all the morning. At noon to the ‘Change, and there almost made my bargain about a ship for Tangier, which will bring me in a little profit with Captain Taylor. Off the ‘Change with Mr. Cutler and Sir W. Rider to Cutler’s house, and there had a very good dinner, and two or three pretty young ladies of their relations there. Thence to my case-maker for my stone case, and had it to my mind, and cost me 24s., which is a great deale of money, but it is well done and pleases me. So doing some other small errands I home, and there find my boy, Tom Edwards, come, sent me by Captain Cooke, having been bred in the King’s Chappell these four years. I propose to make a clerke of him, and if he deserves well, to do well by him. Spent much of the afternoon to set his chamber in order, and then to the office leaving him at home, and late at night after all business was done I called Will and told him my reason of taking a boy, and that it is of necessity, not out of any unkindness to him, nor should be to his injury, and then talked about his landlord’s daughter to come to my wife, and I think it will be. So home and find my boy a very schoole boy, that talks innocently and impertinently, but at present it is a sport to us, and in a little time he will leave it. So sent him to bed, he saying that he used to go to bed at eight o’clock, and then all of us to bed, myself pretty well pleased with my choice of a boy. All the newes this day is, that the Dutch are, with twenty-two sayle of ships of warr, crewsing up and down about Ostend; at which we are alarmed. My Lord Sandwich is come back into the Downes with only eight sayle, which is or may be a prey to the Dutch, if they knew our weakness and inability to set out any more speedily.
my stone is well-bred
serves well in any
injury or sport
and will go to bed
pretty as all the news
of war and sand
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 27 August 1664.