Friday 16 March 1659/60
No sooner out of bed but troubled with abundance of clients, seamen. My landlord Vanly’s man came to me by my direction yesterday, for I was there at his house as I was going to London by water, and I paid him rent for my house for this quarter ending at Lady day, and took an acquittance that he wrote me from his master. Then to Mr. Sheply, to the Rhenish Tavern House, where Mr. Pim, the tailor, was, and gave us a morning draft and a neat’s tongue. Home and with my wife to London, we dined at my father’s, where Joyce Norton and Mr. Armiger dined also. After dinner my wife took leave of them in order to her going to-morrow to Huntsmore. In my way home I went to the Chapel in Chancery Lane to bespeak papers of all sorts and other things belonging to writing against my voyage. So home, where I spent an hour or two about my business in my study. Thence to the Admiralty, and staid a while, so home again, where Will Bowyer came to tell us that he would bear my wife company in the coach to-morrow. Then to Westminster Hall, where I heard how the Parliament had this day dissolved themselves, and did pass very cheerfully through the Hall, and the Speaker without his mace. The whole Hall was joyful thereat, as well as themselves, and now they begin to talk loud of the King. To-night I am told, that yesterday, about five o’clock in the afternoon, one came with a ladder to the Great Exchange, and wiped with a brush the inscription that was upon King Charles, and that there was a great bonfire made in the Exchange, and people called out “God bless. King Charles the Second!”1 From the Hall I went home to bed, very sad in mind to part with my wife, but God’s will be done.
- “Then the writing in golden letters, that was engraven under the statue of Charles I, in the Royal Exchange (‘Exit tyrannus, Regum ultimus, anno libertatis Angliae, anno Domini 1648, Januarie xxx.) was washed out by a painter, who in the day time raised a ladder, and with a pot and brush washed the writing quite out, threw down his pot and brush and said it should never do him any more service, in regard that it had the honour to put out rebels’ hand-writing. He then came down, took away his ladder, not a misword said to him, and by whose order it was done was not then known. The merchants were glad and joyful, many people were gathered together, and against the Exchange made a bonfire. “Rugge’s Diurnal. In the Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts at the British Museum is a pamphlet which is dated in MS. March 21st, 1659-60, where this act is said to be by order of Monk: “The Loyal Subjects Teares for the Sufferings and Absence of their Sovereign Charles II., King of England, Scotland, and Ireland; with an Observation upon the expunging of ‘Exit Tyrannus, Regum ultimus’, by order of General Monk, and some Advice to the Independents, Anabaptists, Phanatiques, &c. London, 1660.”