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And into the scene-room, and there sat down, and she gave us fruit: and here I read the questions to Knipp, while she answered me, through all her part of Flora's Figary's,' which was acted to-day. But, Lord! to see how they were both painted, would make a man mad, and did make nie loath them! and what base company of men comes how poor the men are in clothes, and yet what a among them, and how lewdly they talk! shew they make on the stage by candle-light is very observable. But to see how Nell cursed,-lor having so few people in the pit, was strange.'

gold-and bagging and hiding them in holes | is, Nell Gwyn)--was dressing herself, and was all and corners. His prosperity, indeed, is mar-unready, and is very pretty, prettier than I thought. veilous; and shows us how good a thing it was to be in office, even in the year 1660. When he goes with Lord Sandwich to bring over the King, he is overjoyed with his Majesty's bounty of a month's pay to all the ships' officers-and exultingly counts up his share, and “finding himself to be worth very nearly 100l., blesses Almighty God for it-not having been worth 251. clear when he left his home." And yet, having got the office of Clerk of the Acts in the Admiralty, and a few others, he thrives with such prodigious rapidity, that before the end of 1666, this is his

own account of his condition.

"To my accounts, wherein at last I find them clear and right; but to my great discontent do find that my gettings this year have been 5731. less than my last it being this year in all but 29861; whereas, the last. I got 35601.! And then again my spendings this year have exceeded my spendings the last, by 6441.: my whole spendings last year being but 5097.; whereas this year it appears I have spent 11547.,-which is a sum not fit to be said that ever I should spend in one year, before I am master of a better estate than I am. Yet, blessed be God! and I pray God make me thankful for it, I do find myself worth in money, all good, above 62007.; which is above 18001. more than I was the last year."

We have hinted, however, at a worse meanness than the care of money, and sordid household economy. When his friends and patrons seem falling into disgrace, this is the way he takes to countenance them.

"I found my Lord Sandwich there, poor man! I see with a melancholy face, and suffers his beard to grow on his upper lip more than usual. I took him a little aside to know when I should wait on him, and where he told me, that it would be best to meet at his lodgings, without being seen to walk together. Which I liked very well; and, Lord! to see in what difficulty I stand, that I dare not walk with Sir W. Coventry, for fear my Lord or Sir G. Carteret should see me; nor with either of them, for fear Sir W. Coventry should! &c.

"To Sir W. Coventry's after much discourse with him, I walked out with him into James' Park; where, being afraid to be seen with him (he having not yet leave to kiss the King's hand, but notice taken, as I hear, of all that go to him), I did take the pretence of my attending the Tangier Committee to take my leave of him."

It is but a small matter, after this, to find, that when the office is besieged by poor sailors' wives, clamouring for their arrears of pay, he and Mrs. Pepys are dreadfully "afraid to send a venison pasty, that we are to have for supper to-night, to the cook to be baked-for fear of their offering violence to it."

Notwithstanding his great admiration of his wife and her beauty, and his unremitting attention to business and money, he has a great deal of innocent (?) dalliance with various pretty actresses at the playhouses, and passes a large part of his time in very profligate society. Here is a touch of his ordinary life, which meets us by accident as we turn over the leaves.

"To the King's house; and there going in met with Knipp, and she took us up into the tireing rooms; and to the women's shift,—where Nell (that

And

Now, whether it was strange or not, it was certainly very wrong in Nell to curse so unmercifully, even at a thin house. But we must say, that it was neither so wrong nor so strange, as for this grave man of office, to curse deliberately to himself in this his private Diary. And yet but a few pages after, we find this emphatic entry,-"in fear of nothing but this damned business of the prizes. I fear my lord will receive a cursed deal of trouble by it."

The following affords a still stronger picture of the profligacy of the times.

"To Fox Hall, and there fell into the company of Harry Killigrew, a rogue newly come back out of France, but still in disgrace at our Court, and young Newport and others; as very rogues as any in the town, who were ready to take hold of every woman that come by them. And so to supper in an arbour: but, Lord! their mad talk did make my heart ake! And here I first understood by their talk the meaning of the company that lately were called Ballers; Harris telling how it was by a meeting of some young blades, where he was among them, and my Lady Bennet and her ladies; and there dancing naked! and all the roguish things in the world. But, Lord! what loose company was this that I was in to-night! though full of wit; and worth a man's being in for once,-to know the nature of it, and their manner of talk and lives."

These however, we have no doubt, were all very blameless and accidental associations on his part. But there is one little liaison of which we discover some indications in the journal, as to which we do not feel so well assured, unreserved as his confessions undoubtedly are, that he has intrusted the whole truth even to his short-hand cipher. We al lude to a certain Mrs. Mercer, his wife's maid and occasional companion, of whom he makes frequent and very particular mention. The following entry, it will be allowed, is a little suspicious, as well as exceedingly characteristic.

Mercer in the garden; and coming in, I find my "Thence home-and to sing with my wife and go much time with Mercer, teaching her to sing, wife plainly dissatisfied with me, that I can spend and could never take the pains with her. Which I acknowledge; but it is because the girl do take music mighty readily, and she do not, and music the pleasure almost that I can now take. So to bed, is the thing of the world that I love most, and al

in some little discontent,-but no words from me!”

We trace the effect of this jealousy very curiously, in a little incident chronicled with great simplicity a few days after, where he mentions that being out at supper, the party returned "in two coaches,-Mr. Batelier and

nis sister Mary, and my wife and I, in one,and Mercer alone in the other."

We are sorry to observe, however, that he seems very soon to have tired of this caution and forbearance; as the following, rather outrageous merry-making, which takes place on the fourth day after, may testify.

"After dinner with my wife and Mercer to the Beare-garden; where I have not been, I think, of many years, and saw some good sport of the bull's tossing of the dogs: one into the very boxes. But it is a very rude and nasty pleasure. We had a great many hectors in the same box with us, (and one, very fine, went into the pit, and played his dog for a wager, which was a strange sport for a gentleman,) where they drank wine, and drank Mercer's health first; which 1 pledged with my hat off! We supped at home, and very merry. And then about nine o'clock to Mrs. Mercer's gate, where the fire and boys expected us, and her son had provided abundance of serpents and rockets: and there mighty merry, (my Lady Pen and Pegg going thither with us, and Nan Wright,) till about twelve at night, flinging our fireworks, and burning one another and the people over the way. And at last our businesses being most spent, we into Mrs. Mercer's, and there mighty merry, smutting one another with candle-grease and soot, till most of us were like devils! And that being done, then we broke up, and to my house; and there I made them drink, and up stairs we went, and then fell into dancing, (W. Batelier dancing well,) and dressing him and I and one Mr. Bannister (who with my wife come over also with us) like women; and Mercer put on a suit of Tom's, like a boy, and mighty mirth we had-and Mercer danced a jigg! and Nan Wright, and my wife, and Pegg Pen put on perriwigs. Thus, we spent till three or four in the morning mighty merry!"-Vol. i. p. 438, 439.

After all this, we confess, we are not very much surprised, though no doubt a little shocked, to find the matter come to the following natural and domestic, though not very dignified catastrophe.

"This day, Mercer being not at home, but, against her mistress' order, gone to her mother's, and my wife, going thither to speak with W. Hewer, beat her there!!-and was angry; and her mother saying that she was not a prentice girl, to ask leave every time she goes abroad, my wife with good reason was angry, and when she come home bid her be gone again. And so she went away! which troubled me, but yet less than it would, because of the condition we are in, in fear of coming in a little time to be less able to keep one in her quality." Matters, however, we are happy to say, seem to have been wonderfully soon made up again-for we find her attending Mrs. P., as usual, in about six weeks after; and there are various subsequent, though very brief and discreet notices of her, to the end of the Diary. It is scarcely fair, we confess, thus to drag to light the frailties of this worthy defunct secretary: But we really cannot well help it -he has laid the temptation so directly in If a man will leave such things on record, people will read and laugh at them, although he should long before be laid suug in his grave. After what we have just extracted, the reader will not be surprised at the following ingenious confession.

our way.

"The truth is, I do indulge myself a little the more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age of my life to do it; and out of my observation, that most men that do thrive in the world do for

get to take pleasure during the time that they are getting their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, and then it is too late for them to enjoy it."

One of the most characteristic, and at the same time most creditable pieces of naïveté that we meet with in the book, is in the account he gives of the infinite success of a speech which he delivered at the bar of the House of Commons, in 1667, in explanation and defence of certain alleged mismanagements in the navy, then under discussion in that assembly. The honourable House probably knew but little about the business; and nobody, we can well believe, knew so much about it as our author, and this, we have no doubt, was the great merit of his discourse, and the secret of his success:-For though we are disposed to give him every credit for industry, clearness, and practical judgment, we think it is no less plain from his manner of writing, than from the fact of his subsequent obscurity in parliament, that he could never have had any pretensions to the character of an orator. Be that as it may, however, this speech seems to have made a great impression at the time; and certainly gave singular satisfaction to its worthy maker. It would be unjust to withhold from our readers his own account of this bright passage in his existence. In the morning, when he came down to Westminster, he had some natural qualms.

drink half a pint of mulled sack,-and in the hall "And to comfort myself did go to the Dog and did drink a dram of brandy at Mrs. Hewlett's! and with the warmth of this did find myself in better order as to courage, truly."

He spoke three hours and a half "as comfortably as if I had been at my own table," and ended soon after three in the afternoon; but it was not thought fit to put the vote that day, "many members having gone out to dinner, and come in again half drunk." Next morning his glory opens on him.

46

6th. Up betimes, and with Sir D. Gauden to Sir W. Coventry's chamber; where the first word he said to me was, Good-morrow, Mr. Pepys, that must be Speaker of the Parliament House:" and did protest I had got honour for ever in Parliament. He said that his brother, that sat by him, admires me; and another gentleman said that I could not get less than 1000l. a year, if I would put on a gown and plead at the Chancery-bar. But, what pleases me most, he tells me that the Solici tor-generall did protest that he thought I spoke the best of any man in England. My Lord Barkeley others, Parliament-men there about the King, did did cry me up for what they had heard of it; and say that they never heard such a speech in their lives, delivered in that manner. From thence I went to Westminster Hall; where I met with Mr. G. Montagu, who came to me and kissed me, and told me that he had often heretofore kissed my hands, but now he would kiss my lips: protesting that I was another Cicero and said all the world said the same of me. Mr. Godolphin; Mr. Sands, who swore he would go twenty miles at any time to hear the like again, and that he never saw so many sit four hours together to hear any man in his life as there did to hear me. Mr. Chichly, Sir John Duncomb, and every body do say that the kingdom will ring of my abilities, and that I have done myself right for my whole life; and so Captain Coke and others of my friends say that no man had ever such an oppor

tunity of making his abilities known. And that I may cite all at once, Mr. Lieutenant of the Tower did tell me that Mr. Vaughan did protest to him, and that in his hearing said so to the Duke of Albermarle, and afterwards to Sir W. Coventry, that he had sat twenty-six years in Parliament and never heard such a speech there before! for which the Lord God make me thankful! and that I may make use of it, not to pride and vainglory, but that, now I have this esteem, I may do nothing that may lessen it!"

went to my Lord Crewe's, there to invite Sir Thomas, &c. Thence home; and there find one laying of my napkins against to-morrow in figures of all sorts; which is mighty pretty; and it seems it is his trade, and he gets much money by it. 14th. Up very betimes, and with Jane to Levett's, there to conclude upon our dinner; and thence to the pewterer's to buy a pewter sesterne, which I have ever hitherto been without. Anon comes my company, viz. my Lord Hinchingbroke and his lady. Sir Philip Carteret and his lady, Godolphin and my by and by to dinner, which was very good and cosen Roger, and Creed: and mighty merry; and plentiful (and I should have said, and Mr. George Montagu, who came at a very little warning, which was exceeding kind of him). And there, among other things, my lord had Sir Samuel Morland's late invention for casting up of sums of £ 8. d.; of our discourse was of my Lord Sandwich and his which is very pretty, but not very useful. Most family, as being all of us of the family. And with extraordinary pleasure all the afternoon, thus together, eating and looking over my closet."

The next seems to have been still more solemn and successful.

46

23d. To the office till noon, when word

There is a great deal more of this-but we have given rather too much space already to Mr. Pepys' individual concerns and must turn now to something of more public interest. Before taking leave of private life, however, we may notice one or two things, that we collect incidentally, as to the manners and habits of the times. The playhouses, of which there seem to have been at least three, opened apparently soon after noon-though the entertainments often lasted till late in the night -but we cannot make out whether they were ever exhibited by daylight. The pit, in some of them at least, must have been uncovered; brought me that my Lord Sandwich was come; so for our author speaks repeatedly of being an- I presently rose, and there I found my Lords Sandnoyed in that place by rain and hail. For wich, Peterborough, and Sir Charles Harbord; and several years after the Restoration, women's presently after them comes my Lord Hinchingparts were done by boys,-though there seem broke, Mr. Sidney, and Sir William Godolphin. always to have been female singers. The And after greeting them and some time spent in hour of dinner was almost always twelve; and but a dish at a time; but all so good! But, above talk, dinner was brought up, one dish alter another, men seem generally to have sat at table with all things, the variety of wines and excellent of their their hats on. The wines mostly in use ap- kind I had for them, and all in so good order, that pear to have been the Spanish white wines they were mightily pleased, and myself full of con-both sweet and dry-some clarets-but no tent at it: and indeed it was, of a dinner of about port. It seems still to have been a custom to six or eight dishes, as noble as any man need to go down to drink in the cellar. The Houses have, I think; at least, all was done in the noblest manner that ever I had any, and I have rarely seen of Parliament met, like the courts of law, at in my life better any where else, even at the Court. nine, and generally adjourned at noon. The After dinner my lords to cards, and the rest of us style of dress seems to have been very vari- sitting about them and talking, and looking on my able, and very costly-periwigs appear not to books and pictures, and my wife's drawings, which have been introduced, even at court, till 1663 they commended mightly: and mighty merry all --and the still greater abomination of hair day long, with exceeding great content, and so till seven at night; and so took their leaves, it being powder not to have been yet dreamed of. dark and foul weather. Thus was this entertainMuch of the outskirts of the town, and the ment over-the best of its kind and the fullest of greater part of Westminster, were not paved honour and content to me that ever I had in my and the police seems to have been very life; and I shall not easily have so good again.” deficient, as the author frequently speaks of the danger of returning from Whitehall and that neighbourhood to the city early in the evening no lamps in the streets. Some curious notices of prices might be collected out of these volumes-but we have noted but a few. Coaches seem to have been common, and very cheap-our author gets a very handsome one for 321. On the other hand, he pays 41. 10s. for a beaver, and as much for a wig. Pictures too seem to have brought large prices, considering the value of money and the small proportion of the people who could then have any knowledge of the art. He pays 251. for a portrait of his wife, and 301. for a miniature, besides eight guineas for the setting-and mentions a flower-piece for which the painter refused 701. We may take leave of him and his housekeeping, by inserting his account of two grand dinners he seems to have given both which he appears to have regarded as matters of very weighty concernment. As to the first he says

"My head being full of to-morrow's dinner,

On turning to the political or historical parts of this record, we are rather disappointed in finding so little that is curious or interesting in that earliest portion of it which carries us through the whole work of the Restoration. Though there are almost daily entries from the 1st of January 1659, and though the author was constantly in communication with persons in public situations-was personally introduced to the King at the Hague, and came home in the same ship with him, it is wonderful how few particulars of any moment he has been enabled to put down; and how little the tone of his journal exhibits of that interest and anxiety which we are apt to imagine must have been universal during the dependence of so momentous a revolution. Even this barrenness, however, is not without instruction-and illustrates by a new example, how insensible the contemporaries of great transactions often are of their importance, and how much more posterity sees of their character than those who were parties to them. We have already ob

On the voyage home the names of the ships are changed-and to be sure the Richard, the Naseby, and the Dunbar, were not very fit to bear the royal flag-nor even the Speaker or the Lambert. There is a long account of the landing, and a still longer, of Lord Sandwich's investment with the Order of the Garter-but we do not find any thing of moment recorded, till we come to the condemnation and execution of the regicides —a pitiful and disgusting departure from the broad principle of amnesty, upon the basis of which alone any peaceful restoration could be contemplated, after so long and so unequivocally national a suspension of royalty. It is disgusting to find, that Monk sate on the bench, while his companions in arms, Harrison, Hacker, and Axtell, were arraigned for the treasons in which he and they had been associated. Our author records the whole transactions with the most perfect indifference, and with scarcely a remark-for example,

served that the author's own political predi- | the king was, and all his attendants, when he came ections are scarcely distinguishable till he to him first from my lord; their clothes not being is embarked in the fleet to bring home the worth forty shillings-the best of them. And how King-and the greater part of those with overjoyed the King was when Sir J. Greenville brought him some money; so joyful, that he called whom he converses seem to have been nearly the Princess Royal and Duke of York to look as undecided. Monk is spoken of through upon it, as it lay in the portmanteau before it was out with considerable contempt and aversion; taken out." and among many instances of his duplicity, it is recorded that upon the 21st day of February 1660, he came to Whitehall, "and there made a speech to them, recommending to them a Commonwealth, and against Charles Stuart." The feeling of the city is represented, no doubt, as extremely hostile to the Parliament (here uniformly called the Rump); but their aspirations are not said to be directed to royalty, but merely to a free Parliament and the dissolution of the existing junto. So late as the month of March our author observes, "great is the talk of a single person. Charles, George, or Richard again. For the last of which my Lord St. John is said to speak very high. Great also is the dispute in the House, in whose name the writs shall issue for the new Parliament." It is a comfort however to find, in a season of such universal dereliction of principle, that signal perfidy, even to the cause of the republic, is visited with general scorn. A person of the name of Morland, who had been employed under the Protector in the Secretary of State's office, had been in the habit of betraying his trust, and communicating privately with the exiled monarch-and, upon now resorting to him, had been graced with the honour of knighthood. Even our coldhearted chronicler speaks thus of this deserter. "Mr. Morland, now Sir Samuel, was here on board; but I do not find that my lord or any body did give him any respect-he being looked upon by him and all men as a knave. Among others he betrayed Sir Rich. Willis that married Dr. F. Jones' daughter, who had paid him 10001. at one time by the Protector's and Secretary Thurloe's order, for intelligence that he sent concerning the King.'

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And there is afterwards a similar expression of honest indignation against "that perfidious rogue Sir G. Downing," who, though he had served in the Parliamentary army under Okey, yet now volunteered to go after him and Corbet, with the King's warrant, to Holland, and succeeded in bringing them back as prisoners, to their death-and had the impudence, when there, to make a speech to "the Lords States of Holland, telling them to their faces that he observed that he was not received with the respect and observance now, that he was when he came from the traitor and rebell Cromwell! by whom, I am sure, he hath got all he hath in the world, and they know it too."

When our author is presented to the King, he very simply puts down, that "he seems to be a very sober man!" This, however, probably referred only to his dress and equipment; which, from the following extract, seems to have been homely enough, even for & republic.

"This afternoon Mr. Edward Pickering told me in what a sad, poor condition for clothes and money

"13th. I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there; he looking as cheerful! as any man could do in that condition.-18th. This morning, it being expected that Colonel Hacker and Axtell should die, I went to Newgate, but found they were reprieved till to-morrow. 19th. This morning my dining-room was finished with greene serge hanging and gilt leather, which is very handsome. This morning Hacker and Axtell were hanged and quartered, as the rest are."

He is, to be sure, a little troubled, as he expresses it, at the disinterring and gibbetting of Cromwell's dead and festering bodythinking it unfit that "a man of so great courage as he was, should have that dishonour-though otherwise he might deserve it-enough!" He does not fail, however, to attend the rest of the executions, and to describe them as spectacles of ordinary occurrence-thus,

19th. This morning, before we sat, I went to Aldgate; and at the corner shop, a draper's, I stood, and did see Barkestead, Okey, and Corbet, drawne towards the gallows at Tiburne; and there they were hanged and quartered. They all looked what they did to the King to be just; which is very cheerful! but I hear they all die defending very strange!"

14th. About eleven o'clock, having a room got ready for us, we all went out to the Tower Hill; and there, over against the scaffold, made on pur

pose this day, saw Sir Henry Vane brought. A speech, many times interrupted by the sheriffe and very great press of people. He made a long others there; and they would have taken his paper out of his hand, but he would not let it go. But they caused all the books of those that writ after him to be given to the sheriffe: and the trumpets were brought under the scaffold that he might not be heard. Then he prayed, and so fitted him self, and received the blow; but the scaffold was so crowded that we could not see it done. He

had a blister, or issue, upon his neck, which he | fear him; while here a prince, come in with all the desired them not to hurt! He changed not his love and prayers and good liking of his people, who colour or speech to the last, but died justifying have given greater signs of loyalty and willingness himself and the cause he had stood for; and to serve him with their estates than ever was done spoke very confidently of his being presently at by any people, hath lost all so soon, that it is a the right hand of Christ; and in all things ap-miracle that a man could devise to lose so much in peared the most resolved man that ever died in so little time." that manner."

The following particulars of the condition of the Protector's family are curious, and probably authentic. The conversation is in the end of 1664.

I

In spite of those rigorous measures, the author very soon gets disgusted with "the lewdness, beggary, and wastefulness," of the new government-and after sagaciously re"In my way to Brampton in this day's journey marking, that "I doubt our new Lords of the met with Mr. White, Cromwell's chaplain that Council do not mind things as the late powers was, and had a great deal of discourse with him. did-but their pleasure or profit more," he Among others, he tells me that Richard is, and hath proceeds to make the following striking re-long been, in France, and is now going into Italy. marks on the ruinous policy, adopted on this, and many other restorations, of excluding the only men really acquainted with business, on the score of their former opposition to the party in power.

He owns publickly, that he do correspond, and return him all his money. That Richard hath been in some straits in the beginning; but relieved by his friends. That he goes by another name, but do not disguise himself, nor deny himself to any man that challenges him. He tells me, for certain, "From that we discoursed of the evil of put-between the king and his daughter, to have obliged that offers had been made to the old man, of marriage ting out men of experience in business, and of the him-but he would not. He thinks (with me) that condition of the King's party at present, who, as the Papists, though otherwise fine persons, yet it never was in his power to bring in the King with being by law kept for these four-score years out of the consent of any of his officers about him; and employment, they are now wholly uncapable of that he scorned to bring him in, as Monk did, to business; and so the Cavaliers, for twenty years. I told him of what I found writ in a French book secure himself and deliver every body else. When who for the most part have either given themselves over to look after country and family business, and of one Monsieur Sorbiere, that gives an account of those the best of them, and the rest to debau- his observations here in England; among other chery, &c.; and that was it that hath made him things he says, that it is reported that Cromwell did, in his lifetime, transpose many of the bodies high against the late bill brought into the House of the kings of England from one grave to another; for making all men incapable of employment that and that by that means it is not known certainly had served against the King. People, says he, in whether the head that is now set upon a post be that the sea-service, it is impossible to do any thing of Cromwell, or of one of the kings; Mr. White tells without them, there being not more than three me that he believes he never had so poor a low men of the whole King's side that are fit to command almost; and there were Captn. Allen, Smith, the hand of God is much to be seen; and that all his thought in him, to trouble himself about it. He says and Beech; and it may be Holmes, and Utber; and children are in good condition enough as to estate, Batts might do something." and that their relations that betrayed their family are all now either hanged or very miserable."

In his account of another conversation with the same shrewd observer, he gives the folThe most frequent and prolific topic in the lowing striking picture of the different temper whole book, next perhaps to that of dress, is and moral character of the old Republican the profligacy of the court-or what may fairly soldiers, as contrasted with those of the Roy-be denominated court scandal. It would be alists of the former he reports

"Let the King think what he will, it is them that must help him in the day of warr. For generally they are the most substantiall sort of people, and the soberest; and did desire me to observe it to my Lord Sandwich, among other things, that of all the old army now you cannot see a man begging about the streets; but what? you shall have this captain turned a shoemaker; this lieutenant a baker; this a brewer; that a haberdasher; this common soldier

a porter; and every man in his apron and frock, &c. as if they never had done any thing else: Whereas the other go with their belts and swords, swearing and cursing, and stealing; running into people's houses, by force oftentimes, to carry away something; and this is the difference between the temper of one and the other; and concludes and I think with some reason), that the spirits of the old Parliament soldiers are so quiet and contented with God's providence, that the King is safer from any evil meant him by them, one thousand times more than from his own discontented Cavaliers. And then to the publick management of business; it is done, as he observes, so loosely and so carelessly, that the kingdom can never be happy with it, every man looking after himself, and his own lust and luxury."

The following is also very remarkable.

endless, and not very edifying, to attempt any thing like an abstract of the shameful immoralities which this loyal author has recorded of the two royal brothers, and the greater part of their favourites-at the same time, that they occupy so great a part of the work, that we cannot well give an account of it without some notice of them. The reader will probably be satisfied with the following specimens, taken almost at random.

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In the Privy Garden saw the finest smocks and linen petticoats of my Lady Castlemaine's, laced with rich lace at the bottom, that ever I saw; and did me good to look at them. Sarah told me how the King dined at my Lady Castlemaine's, and supped, every day and night the last week; and that the night that the bonfires were made for joy of the Queene's arrivall, the King was there. But there was no fire at her door, though at all the rest of the doors almost in the street; which was much ob served: and that the King and she did send for a pair of scales, and weighed one another; and she, being with child, was said to be heaviest."

"Mr. Pickering tells me the story is very true of a child being dropped at the ball at Court; and that the King had it in his closet a week after, and did dissect it; and making great sport of it, said that "It is strange how every body now-a-days do in his opinion it must have been a month and three reflect upon Oliver, and commend him; what brave houres old; and that, whatever others think, he things he did, and made all the neighbour princeshath the greatest loss (it being a boy, as he says).

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