who hath offered a great sum of money to go, and will put hard for it, he having a fine lady,' and a great man would be glad to have him out of the way. The King is very kind to my Lord Sandwich, and did himself observe to Sir G. Carteret how those very people, meaning the Prince and Duke of Albemarle, are punished in the same kind as they did seek to abuse my Lord Sandwich.

I

18th. Comes my old good friend, Mr. Richard Cumberland, to see me, being newly come to town, whom I have not seen almost, if not quite, these seven years. In a plain country-parson's dress. I could not spend much time with him, but prayed him to come with his brother, who was with him, to dine with me to-day; which he did do: and I had a great deal of his good company; and a most excellent person he is as any know, and one that I am sorry should be lost and buried in a little country town, and would be glad to remove him thence; and the truth is, if he would accept of my sister's fortune, I should give £100 more with him than to a man able to settle her four times as much as, I fear, he is able to do; and I will think of it, and a way how to move it, he having in discourse said he was not against marrying, nor yet engaged. Comes Captain Jenifer to me, a great servant of my Lord Sandwich's, who tells me that he do hear for certain, though I do not yet believe it, that Sir W. Coventry is to be Secre

1 His second wife, Juliana, daughter of Baptist Noel, Viscount Camden. She died the September following.

2 Richard Cumberland, educated at St. Paul's School, and Magdalene College, Cambridge, made Bishop of Peterborough 1691. Ob. 1718, aged 86.

trary of State, and my Lord Arlington Lord Treasurer. I only wish that the latter were as fit for the latter office as the former is for the former, and more fit than my Lord Arlington. Anon Sir W. Pen come and talked with me in the garden, and tells me that for certain the Duke of Richmond is to marry Mrs. Stewart, he having this day brought in an account of his estate and debts to the King on that account. My father's letter this day do tell me of his own continued illness, and that my mother grows so much worse, that he fears she cannot long continue, which troubles me very much. This day, Mr. Cæsar told me a pretty experiment of his, of angling with a minnikin, a gut-string varnished over, which keeps it from swelling, and is beyond any hair for strength and smallness. The secret I like mightily.

19th. It comes in my mind this night to set down how a house was the other day in Bishopsgate Street blowed up with powder; a house that was untenanted; but, thanks be to God, it did no more hurt; and all do conclude it a plot. This afternoon I am told again that the town do talk of my Lord Arlington's being to be Lord Treasurer, and Sir W. Coventry to be Secretary of State; and that for certain the match is concluded between the Duke of Richmond and Mrs. Stewart, which I am well enough pleased with: and it is pretty to consider how his quality will allay people's talk; whereas, had a meaner person married her, he would for certain have been derided at first dash.

20th. To our church to the vestry, to be assessed by the late Poll Bill, where I am rated as an Esquire,1 and

1

We have seen that Pepys was not a little proud of being addressed as S. P., Esquire. In fifty years afterwards, (as we find

for my office, all will come to about £50. But not more than I expected, nor so much by a great deal as I ought to be, for all my offices. The Duke of Richmond and Mrs. Stewart were betrothed last night. It is strange how "Rycaut's Discourse of Turky," which before the fire I was asked but 8s. for, there being all but twenty-two or thereabouts burned, I did now offer 20s., and he demands 50s., and I think I shall give it him, though it be only as a monument of the fire. I met with a sad letter from my brother, who tells me my mother is declared by the doctors to be past recovery, and that my father is also very ill: so that I fear we shall see a sudden change there. God fit them and us for it!

21st. To the Duke of York's playhouse, where unexpectedly I come to see only the young men and women of the house act; they having liberty to act for their own profit on Wednesdays and Fridays this Lent: and the play they did yesterday, being Wednesday, was so well taken, that they thought fit to venture it publickly to-day; a play of my Lord Falkland's,' called "The Wedding Night,” a kind of a tragedy, and some things very good in it, but the whole together, I thought, not so. I confess I was well enough pleased with my seeing it; and the people did do better, without the great actors, than I did expect, but yet far short of what from Steele's pleasant paper in the "Tatler," No. 19) we were become populus armigerorum: every pretender admitted into the fraternity. Who is now excluded? This entry, and Pepys's pride, in 1666, in having a spare bed, are amongst those minute details which render the Diary so valuable as a history of manners.

1 Henry Carey, third Viscount Falkland, M.P. for Arundell, 1661. Ob. 1664.

they do when they are there. Our trial for a good prize came on to-day, "The Phoenix, worth two or £3000," when by and by Sir W. Batten told me we had got the day, which was mighty welcome news to me and us all. But it is pretty to see what money will do. Yesterday, Walker was mighty cold on our behalf, till Sir W. Batten promised him, if we sped in this business of the goods, a coach; and if at the next trial we sped for the ship, we would give him a pair of horses. And he hath strove for us to-day like a prince, though the Swedes' Agent was there with all the vehemence he could to save the goods, but yet we carried it against him.

22nd. My wife having dressed herself in a silly dress of a blue petticoat uppermost, and a white satin waistcoat and white hood, though I think she did it because her gown is gone to the tailor's, did, together with my being hungry, which always makes me peevish, make me angry. The Duke of York, instead of being at sea as Admirall, is now going from port to port, as he is this day at Harwich, and was the other day with the King at Sheernesse, and hath ordered at Portsmouth how fortifications shall be made to oppose the enemy, in case of invasion, which is to us a sad consideration, and shameful to the nation, especially for so many proud vaunts as we have made against the Dutch, and all from the folly of the Duke of Albemarle, who did throw us into this war.

23d. At the office, where Sir W. Pen come, being returned from Chatham, from considering the means of fortifying the river Medway, by a chain at the stakes,

1 Sir W. Walker.

VOL. III.

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and ships laid there with guns to keep the enemy from coming up to burn our ships; all our care now being to fortify ourselves against their invading us. Vexed with our maid Luce, our cookmaid, who is a good drudging servant in everything else, and pleases us, but that she will be drunk, and hath been so last night and all this day, that she could not make clean the house. My fear is only fire.

24th. With Sir G. Carteret and Sir J. Minnes; and they did talk of my Lord Brouncker, whose father, it seems, did give Mr. Ashburnham and the present Lord Bristol £1200 to be made an Irish lord, and swore the same day that he had not 12d. left to pay for his dinner: they made great mirth at this, my Lord Brouncker having lately given great matter of offence both to them and us all, that we are at present mightily displeased with him. By and by to the Duke of York, where we all met, and there was the King also; and all our discourse was about fortifying of the Medway and Harwich, which is to be entrenched quite round, and Portsmouth: and here they advised with Sir Godfry Lloyd and Sir Bernard de Gunn,' the two great engineers, and had the plates drawn before them; and

1 Sir Bernard de Gomme was born at Lille, in 1620. When young, he served in the campaigns of Henry Frederic, Prince of Orange, and afterwards entered the service of Charles I., by whom he was knighted. Under Charles II. and James II., he filled the offices of Chief Engineer, Quarter-Master General, and Surveyor of the Ordnance: he died November 23, 1685, and is buried in the Tower of London. He first fortified Sheerness, Liverpool, &c., and he strengthened Portsmouth. His plans of these places and others, and of some of Charles I.'s battles, are in the British Museum, where also is preserved a miniature portrait of him in oil.