Stormy

Up, and at the office all the morning. At noon Sir J. Minnes and I to the Dolphin Tavern, there to meet our neighbours, all of the Parish, this being Procession-day, to dine. And did; and much very good discourse; they being, most of them, very able merchants as any in the City: Sir Andrew Rickard, Mr. Vandeputt, Sir John Fredericke, Harrington, and others. They talked with Mr. Mills about the meaning of this day, and the good uses of it; and how heretofore, and yet in several places, they do whip a boy at each place they stop at in their procession.
Thence I to the Duke of York’s playhouse, and there saw “The Tempest,” which still pleases me mightily, and thence to the New Exchange, and then home, and in the way stopped to talk with Mr. Brisband, who gives me an account of the rough usage Sir G. Carteret and his Counsel had the other day, before the Commissioners of Accounts, and what I do believe we shall all of us have, in a greater degree than any he hath had yet with them, before their three years are out, which are not yet begun, nor God knows when they will, this being like to be no session of Parliament, when they now rise. So home, and there took up Mrs. Turner and carried her to Mile End and drank, and so back talking, and so home and to bed, I being mighty cold, this being a mighty cold day, and I had left off my waistcoat three or four days. This evening, coming home in the dusk, I saw and spoke to our Nell, Pain’s daughter, and had I not been very cold I should have taken her to Tower hill para together et toker her.
Thus ends this month; my wife in the country, myself full of pleasure and expence; and some trouble for my friends, my Lord Sandwich, by the Parliament, and more for my eyes, which are daily worse and worse, that I dare not write or read almost any thing. The Parliament going in a few days to rise; myself so long without accounting now, for seven or eight months, I think, or more, that I know not what condition almost I am in, as to getting or spending for all that time, which troubles me, but I will soon do it. The kingdom in an ill state through poverty; a fleete going out, and no money to maintain it, or set it out; seamen yet unpaid, and mutinous when pressed to go out again; our Office able to do little, nobody trusting us, nor we desiring any to trust us, and yet have not money for any thing, but only what particularly belongs to this fleete going out, and that but lamely too. The Parliament several months upon an Act for 300,000l., but cannot or will not agree upon it, but do keep it back, in spite of the King’s desires to hasten it, till they can obtain what they have a mind, in revenge upon some men for the late ill managements; and he is forced to submit to what they please, knowing that, without it, he shall have no money, and they as well, that, if they give the money, the King will suffer them to do little more; and then the business of religion do disquiet every body, the Parliament being vehement against the Nonconformists, while the King seems to be willing to countenance them. So we are all poor, and in pieces — God help us! while the peace is like to go on between Spain and France; and then the French may be apprehended able to attack us. So God help us!

noon tempest
like a cold country
full of eyes

and we forced to submit
to that disquiet
are all in pieces

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 30 April 1668

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