me and were merry. But, Lord! to hear how W. Symons do commend and look
sadly and then talk bawdily and merrily, though his wife was dead but the
other day, would make a dogg laugh. After dinner I did go in further part
of kindness to Luellin for his kindness about Deering's L50 which he
procured me the other day of him. We spent all the afternoon together and
then they to cards with my wife, who this day put on her Indian blue gowne
which is very pretty, where I left them for an hour, and to my office, and
then to them again, and by and by they went away at night, and so I again
to my office to perfect a letter to Mr. Coventry about Department
Treasurers, wherein I please myself and hope to give him content and do
the King service therein. So having done, I home and to teach my wife a
new lesson in the globes, and to supper, and to bed. We had great
pleasure this afternoon; among other things, to talk of our old passages
together in Cromwell's time; and how W. Symons did make me laugh and
wonder to-day when he told me how he had made shift to keep in, in good
esteem and employment, through eight governments in one year (the dear
1659, which were indeed, and he did name them all), and then failed
unhappy in the ninth, viz. that of the King's coming in. He made good to
me the story which Luellin did tell me the other day, of his wife upon her
death-bed; how she dreamt of her uncle Scobell, and did foretell, from
some discourse she had with him, that she should die four days thence, and
not sooner, and did all along say so, and did so. Upon the 'Change a
great talke there was of one Mr. Tryan, an old man, a merchant in
Lyme-Streete, robbed last night (his man and mayde being gone out after he
was a-bed), and gagged and robbed of L1050 in money and about L4000 in
jewells, which he had in his house as security for money. It is believed
by many circumstances that his man is guilty of confederacy, by their
ready going to his secret till in his desk, wherein the key of his
cash-chest lay.