The Diary

new built are plainly not chosen with regard to the convenience of the City; they stand a great many in a cluster about Cornhill; but that all of them are either in the gift of the Lord Archbishop, or Bishop of London, or Lord Chancellor, or gift of the City. Thus all things, even to the building of churches, are done in this world! And then he says, which I wonder at, that I should not in all this time see, that Moorefields have houses two stories high in them, and paved streets, the City having let leases for seven years, which he do conclude will be very much to the hindering the building of the City; but it was considered that the streets cannot be passable in London till a whole street be built; and several that had got ground of the City for charity, to build sheds on, had got the trick presently to sell that for £60, which did not cost them £20 to put up; and so the City, being very poor in stock, thought it as good to do it themselves, and therefore let leases for seven years of the ground in Moorefields; and a good deal of this money, thus advanced, hath been employed for the enabling them to find some money for Commissioner Taylor, and Sir W. Batten, towards the charge of The Loyall London, or else, it is feared, it had never been paid. And Taylor having a bill to pay wherein Alderman Hooker was concerned it was his invention to find out this way of raising money, or else this had not been thought on. So home to supper and to bed. This morning come to me the Collectors for my Pollmoney; for which I paid for my title as Esquire and place of Clerk of Acts, and my head and wife’s, and servants’ and their wages, £40 17s.; and though this be a great deal, yet it is a shame I should pay no more; that is, that I should not be assessed for my pay, as in the Victualling business and Tangier; and for my money, which, of my own accord, I had determined to charge myself with £1,000 money, till coming to the Vestry, and seeing nobody of our ablest merchants, as Sir Andrew Rickard, to do it, I thought it not decent for me to do it, nor would it be thought wisdom to do it unnecessarily, but vain glory.

6th. Up, and betimes in the morning down to the Tower wharf, there to attend the shipping of soldiers, to go down to man some ships going out, and pretty to see how merrily some, and most go, and how sad others⁠—the leave they take of their friends, and the terms that some wives, and other wenches asked to part with them: a pretty mixture. So to the office, having stayed as long as I could, and there sat all the morning, and then home at noon to dinner, and then abroad, Balty with me, and to Whitehall, by water, to Sir G. Carteret, about Balty’s £1,500 contingent money for the fleet to the West Indys, and so away with him to the Exchange, and mercers and drapers, up and down, to pay all my scores occasioned by this mourning for my mother; and emptied a £50 bag, and it was a joy to me to see that I am able to part with such a sum, without much inconvenience; at least, without any trouble of mind. So to Captain Cocke’s to meet Fenn, to talk about this money for Balty, and there Cocke tells me that he is confident there will be a peace, whatever terms be asked us, and he confides that it will take because the French and Dutch will be jealous one of another which shall give the best terms, lest the other should make the peace with us alone, to the ruin of the third, which is our best defence, this jealousy, for ought I at present see. So home and there very late, very busy, and then home to supper and to bed, the people having got their house very clean against Monday’s dinner.

7th (Easter day). Up, and when dressed with my wife (in mourning for my mother) to church both, where Mr. Mills, a lazy sermon. Home to dinner, wife and I and W. Hewer, and after dinner I by water to Whitehall to Sir G. Carteret’s, there to talk about Balty’s money, and did present Balty to him to kiss his hand, and then to walk in the Park, and heard the Italian musique at the Queen’s chapel, whose composition is fine, but yet the voices of eunuchs I do not like like our women, nor am more pleased with it at all than with English voices, but that they do jump most excellently with themselves and their instrument, which is wonderful pleasant; but I am convinced more and more, that, as every nation has a particular accent and tone in discourse, so as the tone of one not to agree with or please the other, no more can the fashion of singing to words, for that the better the words are set, the more they take in of the ordinary tone of the country whose language the song speaks, so that a song well composed by an Englishman must be better to an Englishman than it can be to a stranger, or than if set by a stranger in foreign words. Thence back to Whitehall, and there saw the King come out of chapel after prayers in the afternoon, which he is never at but after having received the Sacrament: and the Court, I perceive, is quite out of mourning; and some very fine; among others, my Lord Gerard, in a very rich vest and coat. Here I met with my Lord Bellasses: and it is pretty to see