Up, it being fast day for the King’s death, and so I and Mr. Gibson by water to the Temple, and there all the morning with Auditor Wood, and I did deliver in the whole of my accounts and run them over in three hours with full satisfaction, and so with great content thence, he and I, and our clerks, and Mr. Clerke, the solicitor, to a little ordinary in Hercules-pillars Ally — the Crowne, a poor, sorry place, where a fellow, in twelve years, hath gained an estate of, as he says, 600l. a-year, which is very strange, and there dined, and had a good dinner, and very good discourse between them, old men belonging to the law, and here I first heard that my cozen Pepys, of Salisbury Court, was Marshal to my Lord Cooke when he was Lord Chief justice; which beginning of his I did not know to be so low: but so it was, it seems. After dinner I home, calling at my bookbinder’s, but he not within. When come home, I find Kate Joyce hath been there, with sad news that her house stands not in the King’s liberty, but the Dean of Paul’s; and so, if her estate be forfeited, it will not be in the King’s power to do her any good. So I took coach and to her, and there found her in trouble, as I cannot blame her. But I do believe this arises from somebody that hath a mind to fright her into a composition for her estate, which I advise her against; and, indeed, I do desire heartily to be able to do her service, she being, methinks, a piece of care I ought to take upon me, for our fathers’ and friends’ sake, she being left alone, and no friend so near as me, or so able to help her. After having given her my advice, I home, and there to my office and did business, and hear how the Committee for Accounts are mighty active and likely to examine every thing, but let them do their worst. I am to be before them with our contract books to-morrow. So home from the office, to supper, and to bed.
death and I ate the hours
with full satisfaction
at a little place ate
a six-discourse dinner
at home ate sad news
ate a body ate a heart
a thin piece of me likely
to contract
Erasure poems derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 30 January 1668.