time and care to do, but it must be done. So home at noon to dinner, and
then abroad with my wife to a play, at the Duke of York's house, the house
full of ordinary citizens. The play was "Women Pleased," which we had
never seen before; and, though but indifferent, yet there is a good design
for a good play. So home, and there to talk, and my wife to read to me,
and so to bed.

27th (Lord's day). Walked to White Hall and there saw the King at chapel;
but staid not to hear anything, but went to walk in the Park, with W.
Hewer, who was with me; and there, among others, met with Sir G. Downing,
and walked with him an hour, talking of business, and how the late war was
managed, there being nobody to take care of it, and telling how, when he
was in Holland, what he offered the King to do, if he might have power,
and they would give him power, and then, upon the least word, perhaps of a
woman, to the King, he was contradicted again, and particularly to the
loss of all that we lost in Guinny. He told me that he had so good spies,
that he hath had the keys taken out of De Witt's

[The celebrated John de Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland, who,
a few years afterwards, was massacred, with his brother Cornelius,
by the Dutch mob, enraged at their opposition to the elevation of
William of Orange to the Stadtholdership, when the States were
overrun by the French army, and the Dutch fleets beaten at sea by
the English. The murder of the De Witts forms one of the main
incidents of Alexandre Dumas's "Black Tulip."]

pocket when he was a-bed, and his closet opened, and papers brought to
him, and left in his hands for an hour, and carried back and laid in the
place again, and keys put into his pocket again. He says that he hath
always had their most private debates, that have been but between two or