(Lord’s day). Being sent to by Sir J. Minnes to know whether I would go with him to White Hall to-day, I rose but could not get ready before he was gone, but however I walked thither and heard Dr. King, Bishop of Chichester, make a good and eloquent sermon upon these words, “They that sow in tears, shall reap in joy.”
Thence (the chappell in Lent being hung with black, and no anthem sung after sermon, as at other times), to my Lord Sandwich at Sir W. Wheeler’s. I found him out of order, thinking himself to be in a fit of an ague, but in the afternoon he was very cheery. I dined with Sir William, where a good but short dinner, not better than one of mine commonly of a Sunday.
After dinner up to my Lord, there being Mr. Rumball. My Lord, among other discourse, did tell us of his great difficultys passed in the business of the Sound, and of his receiving letters from the King there, but his sending them by Whetstone was a great folly; and the story how my Lord being at dinner with Sydney, one of his fellow plenipotentiarys and his mortal enemy, did see Whetstone, and put off his hat three times to him, but the fellow would not be known, which my Lord imputed to his coxcombly humour (of which he was full), and bid Sydney take notice of him too, when at the very time he had letters in his pocket from the King, as it proved afterwards. And Sydney afterwards did find it out at Copenhagen, the Dutch Commissioners telling him how my Lord Sandwich had hired one of their ships to carry back Whetstone to Lubeck, he being come from Flanders from the King. But I cannot but remember my Lord’s aequanimity in all these affairs with admiration.
Thence walked home, in my way meeting Mr. Moore, with whom I took a turn or two in the street among the drapers in Paul’s Churchyard, talking of business, and so home to bed.
they that sow in tears
shall reap in joy
the chapel hung with black
and no anthem but the sound
of a great whetstone
from the churchyard
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 8 March 1662/63.
Another terrific one.
Thanks, Robbi.