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have done by getting Sir G. Carteret's consent, and an order from the Duke of York for 1,500l. to be paid to him. He promises the whole profit to be paid to my wife, to be disposed of as she sees fit, for her father and mother's relief. So I back to Sir G. Carteret's and talked, and find that he do give every thing over for lost, and let Sir W. Coventry name the man that persuaded the King to take the Land Tax on promise of raising present money upon it. He will, he says, be able to clear himself enough of it. I made him merry, with telling him how many land-admirals we are to have this year: Allen at Plymouth, Holmes at Portsmouth, Spragge for Medway, Teddiman at Dover, Smith to the Northward, and Harman to the Southward. My Lady Carteret was on the bed to-day, having been let blood, and tells me of my Lady Jemimah's being big-bellied. With Sir Stephen Fox, talking of the sad condition of the King's purse, and affairs thereby; and how sad the King's life must be, to pass by his officers.

every hour, that are four years behindhand unpaid. My Lord Barkeley [of Stratton], I met with there, and fell into talk with him on the same thing, wishing to God that it might be remedied, to which he answered, with an oath, that it was as easy to remedy it as anything in the world; saying, that there is himself and three more would venture their carcasses upon it to pay all the King's debts in three years, had they the managing his revenue, and putting 300,000l. in his purse, as a stock. But, Lord! what a thing is this to me, that do know how likely a man my Lord Barkeley of all the world is, to do such a thing as this. Sir W. Coventry tells me plainly, that to all future complaints of lack of money, he will answer but with the shrug of the shoulder; which methought did come to my heart, to see him to begin to abandon the King's affairs, and let them sink or

swim, so he do his owne part, which I confess I believe he do beyond any officer the King has, but unless he do endeavour to make others do theirs, nothing will be done. My wife had been to-day at White Hall to the Maundy,' it being Maundy Thursday; but the King did not wash the poor people's feet himself, but the Bishop of London did it for him. To Hackney, where good neat's tongue, and things to eat and drink, and very merry, the weather being mighty pleasant; and here I was told that at their church they have a fair pair of organs, which play while the people sing, which I am mighty glad of, wishing the like at our church at London, and would give 50l. towards it.

5th. In the street met with Mr. Sanchy, my old acquaintance at Cambridge, reckoned a great minister here in the City, and by Sir Richard Ford particularly, which I wonder at; for methinks, in his talk, he is but a mean man. To the Old Exchange, and there to Sir Robert Viner's, and made up my account there, to my great content; but I find they do not keep them so regularly as to enable them to do it easily, and truly, and readily, nor would it have been easily stated by any body on my behalf but myself, several things being to be referred to memory, which nobody else could have done, and therefore it

1 Alms are still annually distributed to a certain number of poor persons in the royal chapel at Whitehall, in the name of the Sovereign, on Maundy Thursday, the day preceding Good Friday. The word is derived from the baskets, or maunds, in which the gift is contained. Formerly, the Kings and Queens of England, besides bestowing their maunds on as many poor men and women as they were years old, washed their feet. James II. was probably the last of our monarchs who performed this ceremony. Of the ceremonial of the Maundy as practised in George III's time, some engravings were published in 1773, after drawings by S. H. Grimm. It is the custom to give the royal alms in small silver coinage, struck especially for the occasion, and called Maundy money.

is fully necessary for me to even accounts with these people as often as I can. So to Sir W. Batten's, where Mr. Young was talking about the building of the City again: and he told me that those few churches that are to be new built are plainly not chosen with regard to the convenience of the City; they stand a great many in a cluster about Cornhill; but that all of them are either in the gift of the Lord Archbishop, or Bishop of London, or Lord Chancellor, or gift of the City. Thus all things, even to the building of churches, are done in this world! And then he says, which I wonder at, that he should not in all this time see, that Moorefields have houses two stories high in them, and paved streets, the City having let leases for seven years, which he do conclude will be very much to the hindering the building of the City; but it was considered that the streets cannot be passable in London till the whole street be built; and several that had got ground of the City for charity, to build sheds on, had got the trick presently to sell that for 60/., which did not cost them 20%. to put up; and so the City, being very poor in stock, thought it as good to do it themselves, and therefore let leases for seven years of the ground in Moorefields; and a good deal of this money, thus advanced, hath been employed for the enabling them to find some money for Commissioner Taylor, and Sir W. Batten, towards the charge of "The Loyall London," or else, it is feared, it had never been paid. This morning come to me the Collectors for my Pollmoney; for which I paid for my title as Esquire and place of Clerk of Acts, and my head and wife's, and servants' and their wages, 40/. 175.; and though this be a great deal, yet it is a shame I should pay no more: that is, that I should not be assessed for my

1 The ship given by the City to the King. See 10th June, 1666, ante.

pay, as in the victualling business and Tangier; and for my money, which, of my own accord, I had determined to charge myself with 1,000l. money, till coming to the Vestry, and seeing nobody of our ablest merchants, as Sir Andrew Rickard, to do it, I thought it not decent for me to do it, and would it be thought wisdom to do it unnecessarily, but vain glory.

6th. To the Tower wharfe, to attend the shipping of soldiers, to go down to man some ships going out, and pretty to see how merrily some, and most go, and how sad others the leave they take of their friends, and the terms that some wives, and other wenches asked to part with them: a pretty mixture. Away to the Exchange, and mercers and drapers, up and down, to pay all my scores occasioned by this mourning for my mother; and emptied a 50/. bag, and it was a joy to me to see that I am able to part with such a sum, without much inconvenience: at least, without any trouble of mind.

7th. (Easter day.) With my wife to church, where Mr. Mills, a lazy sermon. After dinner to walk in the Parke, and heard the Italian musique at the Queen's chapel, whose composition is fine, but yet the voices of eunuchs I do not like as our women, nor am more pleased with it at all than with English voices, but that they do jump most excellently with themselves and their instrument, which is wonderful pleasant; but I am convinced more and more, that, as every nation has a particular accent and tone in discourse, so as the tone of one not to agree with or please the other, no more can the fashion of singing to words, for that the better the words are set, the more they take in of the ordinary tone of the country whose language the song speaks, so that a song well composed by an Englishman must be better to an Englishman than it can be to a stranger, or than if

set by a stranger in foreign words. Thence to White Hall, and there saw the King come out of chapel after prayers in the afternoon, which he is never at but after having received the Sacrament: and the Court, I perceive, is quite out of mourning; and some very fine; among others, my Lord Gerard, in a very rich vest and coat. Here I met with my Lord Bellassis: and it is pretty to see what a formal story he tells me of his leaving his place upon the death of my Lord Cleveland, by which he is become Captain of the Pensioners; and that the King did leave it to him to keep the other or take this; whereas, I know the contrary, that they had a mind to have him away from Tangier. He tells me he is commanded by the King to go down to the north to satisfy the Deputy Lieutenants of Yorkshire, who have desired to lay down their commissions upon pretence of having no profit by their places but charge, but indeed it is upon the Duke of Buckingham being under a cloud, of whom there is yet nothing heard, so that the King is apprehensive of their discontent, and sends him to pacify them, and I think he is as good a dissembler as any man else, and a fine person he is, and proper to lead the Pensioners, but a man of no honour nor faith I doubt. Into Moor Fields, and did find houses built two stories high, and like to stand; and it must become a place of great trade, till the City be built; and the street is already paved as London streets used to be.

8th. Away to the Temple, to my new bookseller's:

1 Thomas Wentworth, fourth Lord Wentworth of Nettlested, advanced, in 1625-6, to the Earldom of Cleveland, and in 1662 made Captain of the band of Pensioners. He died in 1667, s. p. m., when the Barony devolved upon his daughter, Henrietta, Baroness Wentworth, afterwards mistress of the Duke of Monmouth.

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