which will be very noble and quite put down the other two.

So home to dinner and then to the office, and entered in my manuscript
book the Victualler's contract, and then over the water and walked to see
Sir W. Pen, and sat with him a while, and so home late, and to my viall.
So up comes Creed again to me and stays all night, to-morrow morning being
a hearing before the Duke. So to bed full of discourse of his business.

4th. Up by 4 o'clock and sent him to get matters ready, and I to my
office looking over papers and mending my manuscript by scraping out the
blots and other things, which is now a very fine book. So to St. James's
by water with Sir J. Minnes and Sir W. Batten, I giving occasion to a
wager about the tide, that it did flow through bridge, by which Sir W.
Batten won 5s. of Sir J. Minnes. At St. James's we staid while the Duke
made himself ready. Among other things Sir Allen Apsley showed the Duke
the Lisbon Gazette in Spanish, where the late victory is set down
particularly, and to the great honour of the English beyond measure. They
have since taken back Evora, which was lost to the Spaniards, the English
making the assault, and lost not more than three men. Here I learnt that
the English foot are highly esteemed all over the world, but the horse not
so much, which yet we count among ourselves the best; but they abroad have
had no great knowledge of our horse, it seems. The Duke being ready, we
retired with him, and there fell upon Mr. Creed's business, where the
Treasurer did, like a mad coxcomb, without reason or method run over a
great many things against the account, and so did Sir J. Minnes and Sir W.
Batten, which the Duke himself and Mr. Coventry and my Lord Barkely and
myself did remove, and Creed being called in did answer all with great
method and excellently to the purpose (myself I am a little conscious did
not speak so well as I purposed and do think I used to do, that is, not so
intelligibly and persuasively, as I well hoped I should), not that what I