into any mistaken vote about the business of tickets, before they were
better informed. I walked in the Hall all the morning with my Lord
Brouncker, who was in great pain there, and, the truth is, his business
is, without reason, so ill resented by the generality of the House, that I
was almost troubled to be seen to walk with him, and yet am able to
justify him in all, that he is under so much scandal for. Here I did get
a copy of the report itself, about our paying off men by tickets; and am
mightily glad to see it, now knowing the state of our case, and what we
have to answer to, and the more for that the House is like to be kept by
other business to-day and to-morrow, so that, against Thursday, I shall be
able to draw up some defence to put into some Member's hands, to inform
them, and I think we may [make] a very good one, and therefore my mind is
mightily at ease about it. This morning they are upon a Bill, brought in
to-day by Sir Richard Temple, for obliging the King to call Parliaments
every three years; or, if he fail, for others to be obliged to do it, and
to keep him from a power of dissolving any Parliament in less than forty
days after their first day of sitting, which is such a Bill as do speak
very high proceedings, to the lessening of the King; and this they will
carry, and whatever else they desire, before they will give any money; and
the King must have money, whatever it cost him. I stepped to the Dog
Tavern, and thither come to me Doll Lane, and there we did drink together,
and she tells me she is my valentine . . . . Thence, she being gone,
and having spoke with Mr. Spicer here, whom I sent for hither to discourse
about the security of the late Act of 11 months' tax on which I have
secured part of my money lent to Tangier. I to the Hall, and there met
Sir W. Pen, and he and I to the Beare, in Drury Lane, an excellent
ordinary, after the French manner, but of Englishmen; and there had a good
fricassee, our dinner coming to 8s., which was mighty pretty, to my great
content; and thence, he and I to the King's house, and there, in one of
the upper boxes, saw "Flora's Vagarys," which is a very silly play; and