Up, and to the office, and there with W. Griffin talking about getting the place to build a coach-house, or to hire one, which I now do resolve to have, and do now declare it; for it is plainly for my benefit for saving money.
By and by the office sat, and there we concluded on our letter to the Commissioners of Accounts and to the several officers of ours about the work they are to do to answer their late great demands. At noon home to dinner, and after dinner set my wife and girl down at the Exchange, and I to White Hall; and, by and by, the Duke of York comes, and we had a little meeting, Anglesey, W. Pen, and I there, and none else: and, among other things, did discourse of the want of discipline in the fleete, which the Duke of York confessed, and yet said that he, while he was there, did keep it in a good measure, but that it was now lost when he was absent; but he will endeavour to have it again. That he did tell the Prince and Duke of Albemarle they would lose all order by making such and such men commanders, which they would, because they were stout men: he told them that it was a reproach to the nation, as if there were no sober men among us, that were stout, to be had. That they did put out some men for cowards that the Duke of York had put in, but little before, for stout men; and would now, were he to go to sea again, entertain them in his own division, to choose: and did put in an idle fellow, Greene, who was hardly thought fit for a boatswain by him: they did put him from being a lieutenant to a captain’s place of a second-rate ship; as idle a drunken fellow, he said, as any was in the fleete. That he will now desire the King to let him be what he is, that is, Admirall; and he will put in none but those that he hath great reason to think well of; and particularly says, that; though he likes Colonell Legg well, yet his son that was, he knows not how, made a captain after he had been but one voyage at sea, he should go to sea another apprenticeship, before ever he gives him a command. We did tell him of the many defects and disorders among the captains, and I prayed we might do it in writing to him, which he liked; and I am glad of an opportunity of doing it. Thence away, and took up wife and girl, and home, and to the office, busy late, and so to supper and to bed. My wife this day hears from her father and mother: they are in France, at Paris; he, poor good man! I think he is, gives her good counsel still, which I always observed of him, and thankful for my small charities to him. I could be willing to do something for them, were I sure not to bring them over again hither. Coming home, my wife and I went and saw Kate Joyce, who is still in mighty sorrow, and the more from something that Dr. Stillingfleete should simply say in his sermon, of her husband’s manner of dying, as killing himself.
let our work all go to sea
green as a drunk
on an apprenticeship
before we tell of the many defects
the small charities
the joy still dying
Erasure poems derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 28 January 1668.