To Whitehall, where I found my Lord gone abroad to the Wardrobe, whither he do now go every other morning, and do seem to resolve to understand and look after the business himself.
From thence to Westminster Hall, and in King Street there being a great stop of coaches, there was a falling out between a drayman and my Lord Chesterfield’s coachman, and one of his footmen killed. At the Hall I met with Mr. Creed, and he and I to Hell to drink our morning draught, and so to my Lord’s again, where I found my wife, and she and I dined with him and my Lady, and great company of my Lord’s friends, and my Lord did show us great respect.
Soon as dinner was done my wife took her leave, and went with Mr. Blackburne and his wife to London to a christening of a Brother’s child of his on Tower Hill.
And I to a play, “The Scorn-full Lady.”
And that being done, I went homewards, and met Mr. Moore, who had been at my house, and took him to my father’s, and we three to Standing’s to drink. Here Mr. Moore told me how the House had this day voted the King to have all the Excise for ever.
This day I do also hear that the Queen’s going to France is stopt, which do like me well, because then the King will be in town the next month, which is my month again at the Privy Seal. From thence home, where when I come I do remember that I did leave my boy Waineman at Whitehall with order to stay there for me in the court, at which I was much troubled, but about 11 o’clock at night the boy came home well, and so we all to bed.
I found a war
every morning,
a falling out, a field
men killed
friends and brothers for,
stopped like a seal
in a well.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 27 November 1660.