Up and to my office, where Mr. Andrews comes, and reckoning with him I get 64l. of him. By and by comes Mr. Gawden, and reckoning with him he gives me 60l. in his account, which is a great mercy to me. Then both of them met and discoursed the business of the first man’s resigning and the other’s taking up the business of the victualling of Tangier, and I do not think that I shall be able to do as well under Mr. Gawden as under these men, or within a little as to profit and less care upon me.
Thence to the King’s Head to dinner, where we three and Creed and my wife and her woman dined mighty merry and sat long talking, and so in the afternoon broke up, and I led my wife to our lodging again, and I to the office where did much business, and so to my wife.
This night comes Sir George Smith to see me at the office, and tells me how the plague is decreased this week 740, for which God be praised! but that it encreases at our end of the town still, and says how all the towne is full of Captain Cocke’s being in some ill condition about prize-goods, his goods being taken from him, and I know not what. But though this troubles me to have it said, and that it is likely to be a business in Parliament, yet I am not much concerned at it, because yet I believe this newes is all false, for he would have wrote to me sure about it.
Being come to my wife, at our lodging, I did go to bed, and left my wife with her people to laugh and dance and I to sleep.
come a reckoning
I think I shall be able
to profit off it
the plague increases still
but like a parliament not much concerned
we laugh to sleep
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 4 October 1665.