(Lord’s day). Up, and to my chamber to set some papers in order, and then, to church, where my old acquaintance, that dull fellow, Meriton, made a good sermon, and hath a strange knack of a grave, serious delivery, which is very agreeable. After church to White Hall, and there find Sir G. Carteret just set down to dinner, and I dined with them, as I intended, and good company, the best people and family in the world I think. Here was great talk of the good end that my Lord Treasurer made; closing his owne eyes and setting his mouth, and bidding adieu with the greatest content and freedom in the world; and is said to die with the cleanest hands that ever any Lord Treasurer did. After dinner Sir G. Carteret and I alone, and there, among other discourse, he did declare that he would be content to part with his place of Treasurer of the Navy upon good terms. I did propose my Lord Belasses as a man likely to buy it, which he listened to, and I did fully concur and promote his design of parting with it, for though I would have my father live, I would not have him die Treasurer of the Navy, because of the accounts which must be uncleared at his death, besides many other circumstances making it advisable for him to let it go. He tells me that he fears all will come to naught in the nation soon if the King do not mind his business, which he do not seem likely to do. He says that the Treasury will be managed for a while by a Commission, whereof he thinks my Lord Chancellor for the honour of it, and my Lord Ashly, and the two Secretaries will be, and some others he knows not.
I took leave of him, and directly by water home, and there to read the life of Mr. Hooker, which pleases me as much as any thing I have read a great while, and by and by comes Mr. Howe to see us, and after him a little Mr. Sheply, and so we all to talk, and, Mercer being there, we some of us to sing, and so to supper, a great deal of silly talk. Among other things, W. Howe told us how the Barristers and Students of Gray’s Inne rose in rebellion against the Benchers the other day, who outlawed them, and a great deal of do; but now they are at peace again.
They being gone, I to my book again, and made an end of Mr. Hooker’s Life, and so to bed.
order
that dull end
of the world
is said to die with the cleanest hands
unlike the law
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 19 May 1667.