The following are excerpts from the entry on this day in the The Diary of Samuel Pepys, a famous 17th century London diary that Pepys, a naval administrator, kept for about a decade.
The detailed, private account is an important primary source for information on the Restoration period in England, marked by the Great Plague of London (1665-1666), the Great Fire of London (1666) and the activities of the East India Company.
Excerpts from the entry: “...and down I went to Greenwich to my office, and there sat busy till noon, and so home to dinner, and thence to the office again, and by and by to the Duke of Albemarle’s by water late, where I find he had remembered that I had appointed to come to him this day about money, which I excused not doing sooner; but I see, a dull fellow, as he is, do sometimes remember what another thinks he mindeth not. My business was about getting money of the East India Company; but, Lord! to see how the Duke himself magnifies himself in what he had done with the Company; and my Lord Craven what the King could have done without my Lord Duke, and a deale of stir, but most mightily what a brave fellow I am....
“This day, calling at Mr Rawlinson’s to know how all did there, I hear that my pretty grocer’s wife, Mrs Beversham, over the way there, her husband is lately dead of the plague at Bow, which I am sorry for, for fear of losing her neighbourhood.”