(Lord’s day). Up, and with my wife to church, and her new woman Barker with her the first time. The girle will, I think, do very well.
Here a lazy sermon, and so home to dinner, and took in my Lady Pen and Peg (Sir William being below with the fleete), and mighty merry we were, and then after dinner presently (it being a mighty cool day) I by coach to White Hall, and there attended the Cabinet, and was called in before the King and them to give an account of our want of money for Tangier, which troubles me that it should be my place so often and so soon after one another to come to speak there of their wants — the thing of the world that they love least to hear of, and that which is no welcome thing to be the solicitor for — and to see how like an image the King sat and could not speak one word when I had delivered myself was very strange; only my Lord Chancellor did ask me, whether I thought it was in nature at this time to help us to anything. So I was referred to another meeting of the Lords Commissioners for Tangier and my Lord Treasurer, and so went away, and by coach home, where I spent the evening in reading Stillingfleet’s defence of the Archbishopp, the part about Purgatory, a point I had never considered before, what was said for it or against it, and though I do believe we are in the right, yet I do not see any great matter in this book.
So to supper; and my people being gone, most of them, to bed, my boy and Jane and I did get two of my iron chests out of the cellar into my closett, and the money to my great satisfaction to see it there again, and the rather because the damp cellar spoils all my chests. This being done, and I weary, to bed.
This afternoon walking with Sir H. Cholmly long in the gallery, he told me, among many other things, how Harry Killigrew is banished the Court lately, for saying that my Lady Castlemayne was a little lecherous girle when she was young and used to rub her thing with her fingers, or against the end of forms, and that she must be rubbed with something else. This she complained to the King of, and he sent to the Duke of York, whose servant he is, to turn him away. The Duke of York hath done it, but takes it ill of my Lady that he was not complained to first. She attended him to excute it, but ill blood is made by it.
He told me how Mr. Williamson stood in a little place to have come into the House of Commons, and they would not choose him; they said, “No courtier.” And which is worse, Bab May went down in great state to Winchelsea with the Duke of York’s letters, not doubting to be chosen; and there the people chose a private gentleman in spite of him, and cried out they would have no Court pimp to be their burgesse; which are things that bode very ill. This afternoon I went to see and sat a good while with Mrs. Martin, and there was her sister Doll, with whom, contrary to all expectation, I did what I would, and might have done anything else.
a new home
below the present one
wants the world
that they love least
like nature gone
to iron and money
in the damp cellar
long things grew
little fingers that must
be rubbed with blood
and would not eat
and cried to be a doll
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 21 October 1666.