better condition, or in a better way of getting money, than yet I am.
After dinner to the office, where doing infinite of business till past to
at night to the comfort of my mind, and so home with joy to supper and to
bed. This evening Mr. Hempson came and told me how Sir W, Batten his
master will not hear of continuing him in his employment as Clerk of the
Survey at Chatham, from whence of a sudden he has removed him without any
new or extraordinary cause, and I believe (as he himself do in part write,
and J. Norman do confess) for nothing but for that he was twice with me
the other day and did not wait upon him. So much he fears me and all that
have to do with me. Of this more in the Mem. Book of my office upon this
day, there I shall find it.

3rd. Up, and after a long discourse with my cozen Thomas Pepys, the
executor, I with my wife by coach to Holborn, where I 'light, and she to
her father's, I to the Temple and several places, and so to the 'Change,
where much business, and then home to dinner alone; and so to the Mitre
Taverne by appointment (and there met by chance with W. Howe come to buy
wine for my Lord against his going down to Hinchingbroke, and I private
with him a great while discoursing of my Lord's strangeness to me; but he
answers that I have no reason to think any such thing, but that my Lord is
only in general a more reserved man than he was before) to meet Sir W.
Rider and Mr. Clerke, and there after much ado made an end, giving Mr.
Custos L202 against Mr. Bland, which I endeavoured to bring down but could
not, and think it is well enough ended for Mr. Bland for all that. Thence
by coach to fetch my wife from her brother's, and found her gone home.
Called at Sir Robert Bernard's about surrendering my estate in reversion
to the use of my life, which will be done, and at Roger Pepys, who was
gone to bed in pain of a boyle that he could not sit or stand. So home,
where my wife is full of sad stories of her good-natured father and
roguish brother, who is going for Holland and his wife, to be a soldier.