Legacy

(Lord’s day). Rose betimes, and to my office till church time to write two copies of my Will fair, bearing date this day, wherein I have given my sister Pall 500l., my father for his owne and my mother’s support 2,000l., to my wife the rest of my estate, but to have 2500l. secured to her, though by deducting out of what I have given my father and my sister.
I dispatched all before church time and then to church, my wife with me. Thence home to dinner, whither come my uncle Wight, and aunt and uncle Norbury, and Mr. Shepley. A good dinner and very merry. After dinner we broke up and I by water to Westminster to Mrs. Martin’s, and there sat with her and her husband and Mrs. Burrows, the pretty, an hour or two, then to the Swan a while, and so home by water, and with my wife by and by by water as low as Greenwich, for ayre only, and so back again home to supper and to bed with great pleasure.

a rose
bearing all
is my mother’s estate

deducting out the green
for air only


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 27 May 1666.

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