strength but mighty sweet though soft, and a pleasant jolly woman, and in mighty good humour. She sung part of the Opera, though she would not own she did get any of it without book in order to the stage. Thus we end the month. The whole number of deaths being 1388, and of them of the plague, 1031. Want of money in the Navy puts everything out of order. Men grow mutinous; and nobody here to mind the business of the Navy but myself. I in great hopes of my place of Surveyor-General of the Victualling, which will bring me 300l. per annum.

November 1st. My Lord Brouncker with us to Mrs. Williams's lodgings, and Sir W. Batten, Sir Edmund Pooly,1 and others; and there, it being my Lord's birth-day, had every one a green riband tied in our hats very foolishly; and methinks mighty disgracefully for my Lord to have his folly so open to all the world with this woman.

5th. By water to Deptford, and there made a visit to Mr. Evelyn, who, among other things, showed me most excellent

M.P. for Bury St. Edmunds, and in the list of proposed Knights of the Royal Oak for Suffolk.

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painting in little; in distemper, Indian incke, water colours: graveing; and, above all, the whole secret of mezzo-tinto, and the manner of it, which is very pretty, and good things done with it. He read to me very much also of his discourse, he hath been many years and now is about, about Gardenage; which will be a most noble and pleasant piece. He read me part of a play or two of his making, very good, but not as he conceits them, I think, to be. He showed me his Hortus Hyemalis; leaves laid up in a book of several plants kept dry which preserve colour, however, and look very finely, better than an herball. In fine, a most excellent person he is, and must be allowed a little for a little conceitedness; but he may well be so, being a man so much above others. He read me, though with too much gusto, some little poems of his own that were not transcendant, yet one or two very pretty epigrams; among others of a lady looking in at a grate, and being pecked at by an eagle that was there.

6th. Sir G. Carteret and I did walk an hour in the garden before the house, talking of my Lord Sandwich's business; what

enemies he hath, and how they have endeavoured to bespatter him: and particularly about his leaving of 30 ships of the enemy, when Pen would have gone, and my Lord called him back again : which is most false. However, he says, it was purposed by some hot-heads in the House of Commons, at the same time when they voted a present to the Duke of York, to have voted 10,000l. to the Prince, and half-a-crowne to my Lord of Sandwich ; but nothing come of it. But, for all this, the King is most firme to my Lord, and so is my Lord Chancellor, and my Lord Arlington. The Prince, in appearance, kind; the Duke of York silent, says no hurt; but admits others to say it in his hearing. Sir W. Pen, the falsest rascal that ever was in the world; and that this afternoon the Duke of Albemarle did tell him that Pen was a very cowardly rogue, and one that hath brought all these rogueish fanatick Captains into the fleet, and swears he should never go out with the fleet again. That Sir W. Coventry is most kind to Pen still; and says nothing nor do any thing openly to the prejudice of my Lord. He agrees with me, that it is