(Wednesday).
Up, and walked to the Hospitall: very large and fine; and pictures of founders, and the History of the Hospitall; and is said to be worth; 700l. per annum; and that Mr. Foly was here lately to see how their lands were settled; and here, in old English, the story of the occasion of it, and a rebus at the bottom.
So did give the poor, which they would not take but in their box,
2s. 6d.
So to the inn, and paid the reckoning and what not,
13s.
So forth towards Hungerford, led this good way by our landlord, one Heart, an old but very civil and well-spoken man, more than I ever heard, of his quality. He gone, we forward; and I vexed at my people’s not minding the way. So come to Hungerford, where very good trouts, eels, and crayfish. Dinner: a mean town.
At dinner there,
12s.
Thence set out with a guide, who saw us to Newmarket-heath, and then left us,
3s. 6d.
So all over the Plain by the sight of the steeple, the Plain high and low, to Salisbury, by night; but before I come to the town, I saw a great fortification, and there ’light, and to it and in it; and find it prodigious, so as to frighten me to be in it all alone at that time of night, it being dark. I understand, since, it to be that, that is called Old Sarum. Come to the George Inne, where lay in a silk bed; and very good diet. To supper; then to bed.
in the poor box one heart
one people’s hunger
and one time to be old
in a silk bed
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 10 June 1668 (Pepys’ rough notes for a missing entry)