26th April, 1673. Dr. Lamplugh preached at St. Martin's the Holy Sacrament following, which I partook of, upon obligation of the late Act of Parliament, enjoining everybody in office, civil or military, under penalty of £500, to receive it within one month before two authentic witnesses; being engrossed on parchment, to be afterward produced in the Court of Chancery, or some other Court of Record; which I did at the Chancery bar, as being one of the Council of Plantations and Trade; taking then also the oath of allegiance and supremacy, signing the clause in the said Act against Transubstantiation.
25th May, 1673. My son was made a younger brother of the Trinity House. The new master was Sir J. Smith, one of the Commissioners of the Navy, a stout seaman, who had interposed and saved the Duke from perishing by a fire ship in the late war.
28th May, 1673. I carried one Withers, an ingenious shipwright, to the King to show him some new method of building.
29th May, 1673. I saw the Italian comedy at the Court, this afternoon.
10th June, 1673. Came to visit and dine with me my Lord Viscount Cornbury and his Lady; Lady Frances Hyde, sister to the Duchess of York; and Mrs. Dorothy Howard, maid of Honor. We went, after dinner, to see the formal and formidable camp on Blackheath, raised to invade Holland; or, as others suspected for another
design. Thence, to the Italian glass-house at Greenwich, where glass was blown of finer metal than that of Murano, at Venice.
13th June, 1673. Came to visit us, with other ladies of rank, Mrs. Sedley,[33] daughter to Sir Charles, who was none of the most virtuous, but a wit.
19th June, 1673. Congratulated the new Lord Treasurer, Sir Thomas Osborne, a gentleman with whom I had been intimately acquainted at Paris, and who was every day at my father-in-law's house and table there; on which account I was too confident of succeeding in his favor, as I had done in his predecessor's; but such a friend shall I never find, and I neglected my time, far from believing that my Lord Clifford would have so rashly laid down his staff, as he did, to the amazement of all the world, when it came to the test of his receiving the Communion, which I am confident he forbore more from some promise he had entered into to gratify the Duke, than from any prejudice to the Protestant religion, though I found him wavering a pretty while.
LONDON
23d June, 1673. To London, to accompany our Council who went in a body to congratulate the new Lord Treasurer, no friend to it because promoted by my Lord Arlington, whom he hated.