30th.  Up betimes, and with W. Hewer, who is my guard, to White Hall, to a Committee of Tangier, where the business of Mr. Lanyon

[John Lanyon, agent of the Navy Commissioners at Plymouth.  The cause of complaint appears to have been connected with his contract for Tangier.  In 1668 a charge was made against Lanyon and Thomas Yeabsley that they had defrauded the king in the freighting of the ship “Tiger” ("Calendar of State Papers,” 1668-69, p. 138).]

took up all the morning; and where, poor man! he did manage his business with so much folly, and ill fortune to boot, that the Board, before his coming in, inclining, of their own accord, to lay his cause aside, and leave it to the law, but he pressed that we would hear it, and it ended to the making him appear a very knave, as well as it did to me a fool also, which I was sorry for.  Thence by water, Mr. Povy, Creed, and I, to Arundell House, and there I did see them choosing their Council, it being St. Andrew’s-day; and I had his Cross

     [The cross of St. Andrew, like that of St. Patrick, is a saltire. 
     The two, combined with the red cross of St. George, form the Union
     flag.]

set on my hat, as the rest had, and cost me 2s., and so leaving them I away by coach home to dinner, and my wife, after dinner, went the first time abroad to take the maidenhead of her coach, calling on Roger Pepys, and visiting Mrs. Creed, and my cozen Turner, while I at home all the afternoon and evening, very busy and doing much work, to my great content.  Home at night, and there comes Mrs. Turner and Betty to see us, and supped with us, and I shewed them a cold civility for fear of troubling my wife, and after supper, they being gone, we to bed.  Thus ended this month, with very good content, that hath been the most sad to my heart and the most expenseful to my purse on things of pleasure, having furnished my wife’s closet and the best chamber, and a coach and horses, that ever I yet knew in the world:  and do put me into the greatest condition of outward state that ever I was in, or hoped ever to be, or desired:  and this at a time when we do daily expect great changes in this Office:  and by all reports we must, all of us, turn out.  But my eyes are come to that condition that I am not able to work:  and therefore that, and my wife’s desire, make me have no manner of trouble in my thoughts about it.  So God do his will in it!

     ETEXT editor’s bookmarks: 

     Calling me dog and rogue, and that I had a rotten heart
     Have me get to be a Parliament-man the next Parliament
     I have a good mind to have the maidenhead of this girl
     Resolve never to give her trouble of that kind more
     Should alway take somebody with me, or her herself
     There being no curse in the world so great as this

THE DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS M.A.  F.R.S.