Up and by coach to Sir Ph. Warwicke about business for Tangier about money, and then to Sir Stephen Fox to give him account of a little service I have done him about money coming to him from our office, and then to Lovett’s and saw a few baubling things of their doing which are very pretty, but the quality of the people, living only by shifts, do not please me, that it makes me I do no more care for them, nor shall have more acquaintance with them after I have got my Lady Castlemayne’s picture home. So to White Hall, where the King at Chapel, and I would not stay, but to Westminster to Howlett’s, and there, he being not well, I sent for a quart of claret and burnt it and drank, and had a ‘basado’ or three or four of Sarah, whom ‘je trouve ici’, and so by coach to Sir Robt. Viner’s about my accounts with him, and so to the ’Change, where I hear for certain that we are going on with our treaty of peace, and that we are to treat at Bredah. But this our condescension people do think will undo us, and I do much fear it. So home to dinner, where my wife having dressed herself in a silly dress of a blue petticoat uppermost, and a white satin waistcoat and whitehood, though I think she did it because her gown is gone to the tailor’s, did, together with my being hungry, which always makes me peevish, make me angry, but when my belly was full were friends again, and dined and then by water down to Greenwich and thence walked to Woolwich, all the way reading Playford’s “Introduction to Musique,” wherein are some things very pretty. At Woolwich I did much business, taking an account of the state of the ships there under hand, thence to Blackwall, and did the like for two ships we have repairing there, and then to Deptford and did the like there, and so home. Captain Perriman with me from Deptford, telling me many particulars how the King’s business is ill ordered, and indeed so they are, God knows! So home and to the office, where did business, and so home to my chamber, and then to supper and to bed. Landing at the Tower to-night I met on Tower Hill with Captain Cocke and spent half an hour walking in the dusk of the evening with him, talking of the sorrowful condition we are in, that we must be ruined if the Parliament do not come and chastize us, that we are resolved to make a peace whatever it cost, that the King is disobliging the Parliament in this interval all that may be, yet his money is gone and he must have more, and they likely not to give it, without a great deal of do. God knows what the issue of it will be. But the considering that the Duke of York, instead of being at sea as Admirall, is now going from port to port, as he is at this day at Harwich, and was the other day with the King at Sheernesse, and hath ordered at Portsmouth how fortifications shall be made to oppose the enemy, in case of invasion, is to us a sad consideration, and as shameful to the nation, especially after so many proud vaunts as we have made against the Dutch, and all from the folly of the Duke of Albemarle, who made nothing of beating them, and Sir John Lawson he always declared that we never did fail to beat them with lesser numbers than theirs, which did so prevail with the King as to throw us into this war.
little money coming in
the people living only by shifts
have to howl
we are burnt by fear
blue in the belly
like a captain not at sea
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 22 March 1667.