In the morning to Mr. Coventry, Sir G. Carteret, and my Lord’s to give them an account of my return. My Lady, I find, is, since my going, gone to the Wardrobe. Then with Mr. Creed into London, to several places about his and my business, being much stopped in our way by the City traynebands, who go in much solemnity and pomp this day to muster before the King and the Duke, and shops in the City are shut up every where all this day.
He carried me to an ordinary by the Old Exchange, where we come a little too late, but we had very good cheer for our 18d. a-piece, and an excellent droll too, my host, and his wife so fine a woman; and sung and played so well that I stayed a great while and drunk a great deal of wine.
Then home and stayed among my workmen all day, and took order for things for the finishing of their work.
And so at night to Sir W. Batten’s, and there supped and so home and to bed, having sent my Lord a letter to-night to excuse myself for not going with him to-morrow to the Hope, whither he is to go to see in what condition the fleet is in.
To go to war
is to muster and shut up,
to exchange cheer for a cell.
I stay drunk, a thing
for finishing.
(No hope is to go.)
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 7 May 1661.